Particles (baked goods)

Sugar snail

Particle is, especially in the Rhineland , a collective name for sweet, small standard baked goods, such as small yeast pastries, snails , Americans , pig's ears , nut corners , etc. They are often frosted or topped with fruit. Correspondingly, there are pudding pieces, Danish pastries or strawberry pieces.

In addition to North Rhine-Westphalia, the term is clearly in use in Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and western Lower Saxony. Possibly it serves to emphasize the difference to the sweet pastries, which are only cut into pieces after baking. Further north, but also in the Palatinate, this word is only reported scattered. In other areas, particles are also referred to as "bits", "coffee bits" or "sweet bits". In Luxembourg they are called “Kaffiskichelcher”, in Switzerland “Stückli”.

The Rhenish hand-made speaker Willibert Pauels defined the term in a humorous but very vivid way: "You buy pastries when there are visitors and cake would be too good, but cookies would look too stingy".

Individual evidence

1. ^ Faculty of Philosophy and History: Atlas of German Everyday Language (AdA) »sweet pastries« . Last accessed January 21, 2019.
2. ↑ Laura Ihme: This is how carnival looks on television. In: Rheinische Post , January 21, 2019, p. C3.