The Petit Beurre, or Véritable Petit Beurre, also known under the initials VPB, is a kind of

shortbread Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Unlike many other biscuits and baked goods, shortbread does not contain any leavening, ...

from

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

, that is best known in France in general and especially in

Pays de la Loire Pays de la Loire (; ; br, Broioù al Liger) is one of the 18 regions of France, in the west of the mainland. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital, Nantes, one of a handful of "balancing metropolises" (). ...

. It is the Petit Beurre of the LU company, which has become a success worldwide. The dry cake was invented in 1886 by Louis Lefèvre-Utile in the city of Nantes and was inspired by some English products of the time. But the Petit Beurre of LU was not the first to appear, also LU does not have the exclusivity of the name. The substantive Petit Beurre is a generic term from the past; it has a hyphen and when it is plural Petit-beurre is often misspelled. It is known in Anglo-Saxon countries as the French Petit Beurre and is called "Petibör" in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

and "Πτι-Μπερ"/ "PteeBer" in Greece.

Le Petit Beurre LU

Le Petit Beurre LU was invented by Louis Lefèvre-Utile, son of

Pauline Lefèvre-Utile Pauline Isabelle Lefèvre-Utile () (30 June 1830 – 5 April 1922) founded the Lefèvre Utile (LU) company with her husband Jean-Romain Lefèvre in 1854. Early life and marriage Pauline Isabelle Utile was born on 30 June 1830 in Marle, in the ...

, in 1886. A cookie cutter in the form of Petit Beurre was made on September 8, 1886. But Louis Lefèvre did not file the trademark "Petit Beurre LU" until April 9, 1888 to the Nantes Commercial Courts.

Characteristics

They measure 65 mm long, 54 mm wide, and 6.5 mm thick for a unit weight of 8.33 g. The surface of the biscuit is smooth and has twenty-four indents (four lines with six columns) intermixed with the inscription "LU PETIT-BEURRE NANTES" in three lines. The characters of the writing are intended to be a reminder of the writing books that the grandmother of one of the creators of Le Petit Beurre would read. The biscuit is watered with milk before baking to get a "homemade" look. The thickness of 8 biscuits is equal to the width, which allows a square packaging.

Fabrication

At its plant in

La Haie-Fouassière La Haie-Fouassière (also spelled: ''La Haye-Fouassière'', ; br, An Hae-Foazer) is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France. La Haie-Fouassière station has rail connections to Clisson and Nantes. Population See also ...

, about twenty kilometers south of

, LU produces over 9,000 tons of VPB a year, about 1 billion biscuits packaged in 41 million packs of VPB.

Decoration

Le Petit Beurre LU is decorated with four corners in the shape of ears, fourteen teeth in length, ten teeth in width or fifty-two teeth in total, and presents twenty-four indents in four lines of six. These numbers could be interpreted: the four seasons, the fifty-two weeks of the year, or the twenty-four hours in a day.

Publicity

One of the most famous slogans of Petit Beurre is: "Four ears and forty-eight teeth."

Ingredients and nutrition

According to the maker, le Petit Beurre LU contains: *

Wheat flour Wheat flour is a powder made from the grinding of wheat used for human consumption. Wheat varieties are called "soft" or "weak" if gluten content is low, and are called "hard" or "strong" if they have high gluten content. Hard flour, or ''bre ...

: 73.5% *

Powdered sugar Powdered sugar, also called confectioners' sugar, or icing sugar, is a finely ground sugar produced by milling granulated sugar into a powdered state. It usually contains between 2% and 5% of an anti-caking agent – such as corn starch, p ...

* Butter : 13.6% *

Evaporated milk Evaporated milk, known in some countries as "unsweetened condensed milk", is a shelf-stable canned cow’s milk product where about 60% of the water has been removed from fresh milk. It differs from sweetened condensed milk, which contains adde ...

: 1.3% * Salt *

Baking powder Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. Baking powder is used to increas ...

* Extract or Flavoring Also according to the same source, the nutritional intake are the following:

Other Petits Beurre

When designing the Petit Beurre, Louis Lefèvre-Utile was quickly copied by his competitors. He then set up a rather virulent advertising campaign in which he renamed his biscuit the "Véritable Petit Beurre" or "True Petit Beurre". After many years, he managed to impose the basic recipe, without chemical additives, reducing the number of competitors. Another sweet butter biscuit produced in France is known as the "Petit beurre with Lorient

sea salt Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or simply salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea sa ...

.” In 1891, at

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

in Germany, the

Bahlsen Bahlsen is a German food company based in Hanover. It was founded in July 1889 by Hermann Bahlsen (1859–1919) as the "Hannoversche Keksfabrik H. Bahlsen". German politician Ernst Albrecht (1930–2014) was CEO of Bahlsen in the 1970s and the ...

company began making a ''Butterkeks'' (butter biscuit very similar to the French ''Petit Beurre'') called ''

Leibniz-Keks The Leibniz-Keks or Choco Leibniz is a German brand of biscuit or cookie produced by the Bahlsen food company since 1891. It was created by the firm as a rival to a similar French biscuit, the Petit-Beurre. Name The brand name ''Leibniz'' com ...

'' in homage to the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Today many other companies throughout the world make similar biscuits.

References

# ↑ ^{a et b} Patrick Thibault, ''La Belle Histoire de LU'', p. 73. # ↑ " " archive
/small> # ↑ Patrick Lefèvre-Utile, ''L'Art du biscuit'', Éditions Hazan, # :fr:Petit beurre#cite ref-4, ↑
« Interview de Gérard Philippe, directeur de l'usine LU »
https://web.archive.org/web/20111012182901/http://www.linternaute.com/nantes/magazine/economie/dossier/petit-lu/en-savoir-plus.shtml archive] L'internaute (consulté le 6 juin 2008). # :fr:Petit beurre#cite ref-5, ↑ Composition indiquée sur un paquet de biscuits # :fr:Petit beurre#cite ref-6, ↑ Informations nutritionnelles mentionnées sur un paquet de biscuits # ↑ Patrick Thibault, ''La Belle Histoire de LU'', p. 77. # ↑br>« Petit Beurre de Lorient »
Albert Menès (consulté le6 janvier 2008)

External links

History and manufacture of Nantes Petit Beurre, images and captions, at Linternaute.com