What do these machines make? And where were they?
Congratulations to Catherine !
Anis de Flavigny are sweets made in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain in Burgundy. Each candy is made of a green anise seed coated in flavored sugar syrup: anise, violet, rose, mint, liquorice, orange tree...
Ingredients Anis de Flavigny are composed of a seed of green anise, sugar and a natural aroma. Anise seed is that of Pimpinella anisum, a species probably originating in Asia, spread by cultivation in all temperate countries. The sugar is beet if it is white, cane and certified organic if it is brown. The aromas are essential oils and natural aromas extracted with steam.
Manufacturing method It is a sugar-coating: the anise seed is covered with thin successive layers of sugar syrup. It takes fifteen days for the dragéiste to turn a small seed weighing two milligrams into a candy weighing one gram. Since 1591, successive dragéists have remained faithful to the recipe.
Story It was the Benedictine monks who, when the Flavigny Abbey was founded in 719, located very close to the site of Alésia where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix, started making this candy using the anise brought back at the beginning of our era by the Roman traveler Flavius. As early as 1591, Benedictines from the abbey distributed sweets to passing ecclesiastics. In 1660, the pious Anne of Austria was offered seeds of anise in the Luberon where she pilgrimed. His son, Louis XIV has a bezel of Anise sweets coated in successive layers of flavored sugar. During the negotiation of a peace treaty in 1763 with Georges III, King of England, the Chevalier d'Éon notably offered him sweets from Flavigny.
After the French Revolution when the property of the Church was seized, Flavigny Abbey was used as a stone quarry from which the blocks of stone were resold. Eight confectioners from the village will start making this delicacy according to the original recipe. Today, only one factory perpetuates, within the abbey, the production of Anis de Flavigny: the Troubat house founded by Jean Troubat in 1923 when he installed machines there. Its current manager, Catherine Troubat, is trying to perpetuate the values of the Benedictine monks of yesteryear while modernizing her business; she advises taking these sweets in pairs to let them melt in your mouth without chewing them.
Container All over the world, the romantic decoration of Anis de Flavigny boxes shows a shepherd offering sweets to a young girl.
Diffusion Anis de Flavigny were the first sweets to be offered in vending machines in stations and the metro, then in cinemas or department stores from the 1930s. They received the Intersuc blue ribbon in 1988, for being "one of the oldest sweets in France". In 2014, Anis de Flavigny were sold all over the world and are still produced by the artisanal and family business Troubat.
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