But is that true? Even those who point to Mexico as the country of origin of
pastel de tres leches such as Patricia Sharpe say that "nobody knows where this confection came from". Writing for the
November 1999 issue of Texas Monthly:
"Mexican cooking authority Maria Dolores Torres Yzabal (the co-author of The Mexican Gourmet cookbook) thinks it might have originated in a Mexico City bakery whose name is now lost. In her cookbook The Taste of Mexico, Patricia Quintana says that it first appeared in the state of Sinaloa."
"In The Mexican Gourmet, Maria Dolores Torres Yzabal says that antes (bread soaked in wine and layered with milk custard and fruit or nuts) came to Mexico in the 19th century. New York restaurateur and author Zarela Martínez documents Oaxacan recipes for Sopa Borracha and Ante de Almendra, two soaked cakes. In The Taste of Mexico, Patricia Quintana opines that tres leches comes from Sinaloa, and she provides a colonial-era recipe for Viceroy's Cake: sherry-drenched layers of cake, custard, fruit, and meringue."
Another ancestor may have been a Mexican torta de leche:
"Roberto Santibanez (currently the culinary director of the Rosa Mexicano restaurants in New York) provided the next clue. He remembered a dish that his grandmother had made, from the state of Tabasco. Torta de leche (milk cake) is cake batter poured into a pan of sweetened scalded milk, baked, and served floating in its milk sauce."
A second contender for the birthplace of pastel de tres leches is Nicaragua. As Sharpe explains:
"Mexico-born chef Roberto Santibañez of Austin’s Fonda San Miguel has friends in Guatemala and Nicaragua who swear the cake is native to their countries. His pet theory is that it came from a promotional recipe once distributed in Latin America, perhaps on cans of evaporated milk or with a brand of electric mixer."
While some Nicaraguans claim tres leches cake came from Managua,
others have no memory of the dish from their childhoods. Miami food historian Mandy Baca came across a few Nicaraguans who remember it being referred to as "
delicias suecas" (Swedish delights), though there is no Swedish connection and I can find no other record of this. Baca also posits that the English trifle, a soaked dessert designed to make the most of stale cake, may also figure in the tres leches family tree, with the "Mosquito Kingdom" having been under British control from 1633 to 1860. What Nicaraguans are in agreement on is that tres leches cake somehow made its way to Miami, likely due to an exodus of Nicaraguans after the revolution of 1979. According to
the Washington Post, it appeared on the menu for the Nicaraguan restaurant Los Ranchos in Miami when it opened in 1981. The recipe for Los Ranchos' tres leches cake then made its way to Steven Raichlen's Miami Spice in 1993*.