The earliest mention of the name mille-feuille itself appears in 1733 in an English-language cookbook written by French chef Vincent La Chapelle.

When they are baked & cooled, stack them one on the other, the one with the hole on top, & jams between every cake, [sentence unclear, maybe referring to covering all sides with jam] & ice them everywhere with white icing so that they appear to be a single piece; you can embellish it with some red currant jelly, candied lemon skins & pistachio, you serve them on a plate.The word 'mille-feuille' is not used again in the recipe books of the 18th century.

However, under the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, several of the fanciest Parisian pastry shops appear to have sold the cake.

[7] According to Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food, the invention of the form (but not of the pastry itself) is usually attributed to Szeged, Hungary, where a caramel-coated mille-feuille is called 'Szegediner Torte'.

[11] In France, the pastry called Napoleon is made with two joined layers of pâte feuilletée[clarify] filled with frangipane.

[13][failed verification] A similar local variety is called krempita in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, kremna rezina or kremšnita in Slovenia and Croatia, and krémeš in Slovakia.

It is sold with either custard, whipped cream, or both between three layers of puff pastry; almond paste is the most common filling.

A French Canadian method of making a mille-feuille uses graham crackers instead of puff pastry, with pudding replacing the custard layer.

In Mainland China, a similar product also marketed as a Napoleon (拿破侖; Nápòlún, or more commonly, 法式千層酥) varies between regions and individual bakeries, but usually features a top and bottom layer of rough puff pastry, typically made with vegetable shortening rather than butter, and a sponge cake and artificial buttercream filling.

In Lithuanian recipe pastry has layers of fruit filling such as wild cranberries jam and crème pâtissière.

In the Philippines, they are called napoleones (/næpɒˈljoʊnɛs/ na-pol-YOH-nes, Tagalog pronunciation: [na.polˈjɔ.nɛs]; napoleón in the singular), and are made of two to three layers, with pastry cream or white custard as filling, topped with sugar glaze.

Both types are common across coffee shops, tea houses, and patisseries in Portugal; the French mille-feuille is even found on some supermarket chains, produced industrially and either individually packaged or as a set.

While the recipe for the Portuguese variant is very consistent with the original French one, both in look, flavour, and size, there are two additional alternatives.

The second alternative (more common in the regular format) is to tint the white icing sugar with egg gems, thus making it yellow in appearance, but also with the traditional chocolate marble effect.

[15] The cake has enjoyed an especially great popularity since the centenary celebration of the Russian victory over Napoleon in the Patriotic War of 1812.

He added almonds from Crimea and icing sugar on the top (symbolizing the snows of Russia, once so helpful to Russians in their defeat of Napoleon).

In Sweden as well as in Finland, the Napoleonbakelse (Napoleon pastry) is a mille-feuille filled with whipped cream, custard, and jam.