Fauchon's Pates de Fruits, original watercolor
Here is a French sweet, Les Pâtes de Fruits, I've heard about for a long time and never tasted until Fauchon's last days, when they gave me some gratis...
Chuckles is NOT fruit paste, though I grew up eating Chuckles at the movies (but never the licorice).I should be a prime candidate for Pâtes de Fruits, right?
The pâte is 50% boiled-down puree of fresh fruit + 50% cane sugar, so their flavors are intense. Les pâtes de fruits were first made in medieval Auvergne, though now they are made everywhere and every candy maker has their own version. “Dry jams” / "confitures seches" is another way to refer to these jewel-like candied jells...
The flavors are exotic: apricot, banana, blackberry, blackcurrant, blueberry, clementine, coconut, damson plum, fig, grapefruit, green apple, lemon, lime, mango, morello cherry, orange, passion fruit, pear, pineapple, raspberry, redcurrant, strawberry, wild strawberry, apple cinnamon, apple earl grey.
Fruits confits are whole fruits preserved in sugar. The fruit must be fully infused with sugar up to its core; larger fruits take considerably longer than smaller ones to prepare.
Click here and watch a little slide show of the process by Lilamand Confisier in St Remy.
Some of Fauchon's fruit confits I photographed just out of curiosity.
A Fauchon combo box of chocolates (yum), les pates de fruits and whole strawberry confits. Here's a cocktail glass full of confit and those Provencal almond calissons - how I love themPlease tell your stories of pates de fruits.
