Pâtisserie versus pâtissière

Question

I just visited a French pâtisserie this morning called “Ludo's Patisserie”, but was surprised to see their take-home price-list titled “Ludo's Patissiere” (accented characters not being used in either representation).

Looking it up when I got home, I see that “pâtissière” is a female pastry chef, but it's also used in the name of the French pastry cream, “crème pâtissière”. So it's left me confused why the price-list was titled as it was.

Is there a difference between “Ludo's pâtisserie” and “Ludo's pâtissière”, or am I looking at a simple spelling mistake by their printers?

Answer 1

Ludo's Patissiere may be

• a typo
• Ludo's female pastry chef
• Ludo's crème pâtissière
• A Noix pâtissière (a certain piece of veal)

Noix pâtissière (according to servicevie.com)

Définition

Pièce de boucherie: morceau de veau tiré du cuisseau (plus précisément du muscle antérieur de la cuisse). C'est une viande de grande qualité, moins cependant que la noix elle-même. On la détaille en rôtis ou en escalopes.

but since crème pâtissière is hardly ever sold alone, noix pâtissière is no pastry and Ludo has hardly female pastry chefs enough to sell them to everyone, I tend to think that it's a typo.

Answer 2

My first take is that this is the name of a shop in an English-speaking country, because of the 's (which wouldn't make sense in French). The name is “Ludo's [shop], [Ludo being a] female pastry chef”, with “female pastry chef” being expressed in French to look sophisticated. This construction (name, genitive mark, noun designating a type of shopkeeper) is fairly common in shop names in English-speaking countries. For example, Waterstones used to be called “Waterstone's booksellers”.

In French, the prevalent corresponding construction is “chez Ludo — pâtisserie” or “pâtisserie chez Ludo”, though “chez Ludo, pâtissière” is also possible.