Do Cookies Qualify As Pastries?

"Which Side Are You On?" isn't just a prodigious song made famous by Pete Seeger. It's also the question foodies are asking about technicality-centric gastronomic debates, like the famous "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" contention (Anthony Bourdain was on the "nay" side). Similar debates ask, "Is a pizza a pie?" and "Is a taco a sandwich?" (A French taco certainly is). Today, we're debunking another quandary: Are cookies a pastry? The short answer is "Nope." Let's break it down.

The authority at Merriam-Webster defines a "pastry" as "usually sweet baked goods made of dough having a high fat content." The dictionary's provided example sentence reads, "She had a pastry and coffee for breakfast," and a cookie could certainly fit the bill here. However, other definitions of the word fuel the source of the disagreement. The Cambridge Dictionary's more-specific take calls pastry "a food made from a mixture of flour, fat, and water, rolled flat and either wrapped around or put over or under other foods, and then baked." By this understanding, cookies don't qualify.

If a pastry is simply, utilitarianly a food item that is made from dough, then shaped and baked, cookies totally qualify. Bread, which is dough-based but not shaped, therefore would not qualify as a pastry via this definition, either. However, braided challah or other woven breads would fit the bill for a "pastry" by this understanding of the term. Here at Tasting Table, we think a "pastry" constitutes more than just shaping some dough.

Tender, flaky pastry dough for pie crusts and danishes centers around flour, water, and fat (often shortening). Unlike cookie dough, that pastry dough also gets laminated. In lamination, butter is folded into flour-based dough, then rolled out and rerolled multiple times, creating thin, alternating layers of fat and dough. Pastry dough typically isn't sweetened, either, with any sweetness instead coming from the filling, which can also lean savory with fillings like a spinach and feta croissant. By contrast, cookie dough is sweetened and follows a more straightforward assembly. The ingredients (dominantly sugar, eggs, and flour, seldom shortening) are mixed together, then rolled into balls. Shape-wise, cookies are exclusively fairly flat.

A Reddit poll asks, "Is a cookie a pastry?" and 342 voters jumped in to sound off their opinions. The poll provided three answers: "Yes, cookie is a type of pastry" (85 votes), "No, cookie is a cookie" (215), and "No, cookie is in a category not provided as an option" (42). One commenter posits that a cookie is a "baked good," an ostensibly different category from a "pastry." In the professional kitchen, per Escoffier's brigade system, the patissier is the designated chef de partie who runs the pastry and dessert station, which would include cookies as well as croissants, breads, cakes, pies, custards, and more. Indeed, we concur that cookies better fit beneath the umbrella term of "sweet baked good" or "dessert" — but they aren't a pastry.