mille feuille

This term is borrowed directly from French, meaning "thousand sheets," and refers to the characteristic thin, crisp layers of puff pastry. In English, it is used as a loanword to describe this specific dessert, maintaining its French identity rather than being translated as "thousand-layer cake."

Because it is a culinary term of French origin, it is often treated as a mass noun when referring to the type of pastry in general, but it becomes countable when referring to individual servings or different varieties of the dessert.