Dessert
A tres leches cake (lit. 'three-milk cake'; Spanish: pastel de tres leches, torta de tres leches or bizcocho de tres leches), dulce de tres leches,[1][2] also known as pan tres leches (lit. 'three-milk bread') or simply tres leches, is a sponge cake—soaked in three kinds of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and whole milk.
Tres leches is a very light cake, with many air bubbles. This distinct texture is why it does not have a soggy consistency, despite being soaked in a mixture of three types of milk.
Its Albanian variety is referred to as trilece.[3][4]
History
The dessert originated in Nicaragua in an unknown year, likely in the 19th century.[5][6][7][8][9] It is the country's national pastry.[1]
The Austin Chronicle cited possible soaked-cake influences as British rum cake, trifle, fruitcakes, Italian zuppa inglese, tiramisu, bread pudding, and medieval Portuguese sopa dorada.[10]
Jamie Wheelock claimed that the colonization of Nicaragua, while a crisis, "gave rise to a vast process of experimentation and mixtures of food that had never before come together."[11] In the 19th century, European presence in Mexico gave way to the introduction of the antes dessert: bread soaked in wine and layered with milk custard and fruit or nuts.[10]
By 1896, the U.S. Department of Commerce was importing condensed milk to Nicaragua.[12] Cattle, sugarcane plantations, and milk preservation techniques were introduced to Nicaragua by that time, by way of American military occupation.[11]
In 1936, president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a trade agreement with Nicaragua, which "reduced Nicaraguan duties" in favor of importing dairy products from Wisconsin. These included evaporated, powdered, and condensed milk,[11][13] which Wheelock implies affected Nicaraguan recipes.[11] Additionally, in part due to the food insecurity of the Great Depression, canned milk sales "skyrocketed" in Nicaragua.[11]
In the 20th century in Tabasco, Mexico, a dessert named torta de leche consisted of "sweetened scalded milk, baked, and served floating in its milk sauce."[10]
Some sources refer to it as a Mexican cake.[14][15]
The dessert has since become a staple in Albania, Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico.[11]
Recipes for soaked-cake desserts were seen in Latin America as early as the 19th century, in countries like El Salvador, likely a result of the large cross-cultural transfer which took place between Europe and the Americas.[16] Nicaragua is one of the countries where tres leches cake has become popular.[17] The cake is popular in Central and South America, North America, and many parts of the Caribbean, Canary Islands, as well as in Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, and some other parts of Europe.[18][19]
In the US, the cake first became popular in the 1980s beginning in Miami due to Latin American immigration. The popularity then spread across the US, possibly from Los Ranchos restaurant in Miami, which featured it on its menu when it opened in 1981. The cake was so popular from Los Ranchos, that it was featured its recipe on fliers, which were pervasively distributed. Irma Rombauer included a tres leches recipe in her 1997 Joy of Cooking.[20]
European and Middle Eastern variations
A variety of tres leches known as trileçe (A caramel topped version of tres leches) became popular in the Balkans and Turkey around 2015.[citation needed] One theory is that the popularity of Brazilian soap operas in Albania led local chefs to reverse-engineer the dessert, which then spread to Turkey.[21][22] The Albanian version is sometimes made literally with three milks: cow's, goat's and water buffalo's, though more commonly a mixture of cow's milk and cream is used. The albanian variation “trileçe" usually has a caramel topping while the tres leches cake has a cream and fruit topping.[21]
