Bar-Le-Duc Jelly is a currant jelly made in Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine, France. It is made from currants, sugar and water (the syrup used to be honey.) Some of the jelly made is white currant jelly, some is red currant jelly. The currants remain intact in the jam, with a syrup around them, suspended in the jelly. It is sold in small 3 oz (85g) jars, and loved by gourmets.
About 30,000 jars are made a year. It sells in France for about $15 US a jar; (2000 prices.) The currants are gathered by hand, and seeded by hand. To get the seeds out, a very small incision is made in the skin to allow a fine goose-quill to get inside and fish each of the (average) 7 to 8 seeds out, then the flap of skin closed again. About 2,000 currants must be seeded in this way to make 2 ¼ pounds (1 kg) of the jelly. The best deseeder can do about 3 kg (6,000 currants a day.)
Every year, the deseeding women ( épépineuses) compete to see who can do the most. Jacques Dutriez is sole remaining person making Bar-Le-Duc Jelly, as of 2000. His brand is called “Amiable.” He took that business over in 1974. As of 2000, plans were for his grand-daughter Anne Dutriez to inherit the business, and by 2006 she was indeed the contact person for the business. To make the jelly, the fruit is weighed, and set aside. A weight of sugar equivalent to the weight of the fruit
is put in a saucepan with water, heated, then fruit added for 3 to 4 minutes, then the fruit strained out, set aside. The sugar syrup is allowed to slowly simmer until it has thickened somewhat, then poured over the fruit, then canned in jars. Bar-Le-Duc Jelly was reputedly invented in 1344. It has reputedly been enjoyed by the great and famous since at least the 1300s (based on a mention of the word “jam” in general in a legal document in 1344, which Bar-Le-Duc
backers insist refers to Bar-Le-Duc jelly. ) If it has been made that long, then honey would obviously have been used instead of sugar. “Stumpp and Walter also has something that’s been scarce since the war, Bar-le-Duc jelly, 3¼-ounce jars,three for $1.70. This jelly is made of currants chosen for their extra large size, produced in the Departement of Meuse, in France, their name taken from the capital of the departement. The seeds are removed by skilled
workers using goose quills sharpened to a fine point. The carefully seeded whole fruit is made into jelly, the boiling of brief duration, which leaves each currant plump and brightly red to gleam enticingly through the glass. Serve the jelly with coeur a la cream, for instance. The last time GOURMET ran its recipe was in June, 1949. This is one to remember for a red-and-white dessert for that Valentine party.” — Paddleford, Clementine (1898 – 1967). Food Flashes Column. Gourmet Magazine.
February 1950. Barry, Ann. Bar-Le-Duc Currant Preserves. New York: New York Times. 30 January 1983. Porter, Mark. Royal Jelly (Bar-Le-Duc). Waitrose Food Illustrated. London: Waitrose. February 2000.History Notes
Literature & Lore
Sources
Other names
AKA: Lorraine Jelly
French: Confiture de groseilles Bar-Le-Duc
This page first published: Jun 29, 2004 · Updated: Jun 7, 2018.
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A Jam Fit for a Queen
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The most expensive jam in the world is made in Bar-le-Duc from� red currants hand-seeded with a goose quill. Worth every penny!
The French are always on the forefront of fighting unemployment, and now harness the world's passion for fine foods to tackle endemic joblessness in Lorraine. During my French castle expedition, I was received by Mr Dutriez, the largest producer of what can only be the most expensive jam in the world.
Bar-le-Duc, a town in North-East France, has been making fine jams and preserves for the grandees of the world for the last 700 years. By far their most distinctive and famous product is the hand-seeded red currant jam. A 3-oz (85gr) jar goes for $40 a piece unless you buy it at the producer's. The product has been gluttonously endorsed by many famous people across centuries:
Alfred Hitchcock, the British dietician, was so fond of it that French hotels placed this gooseberry jam on their breakfast menu to attract him and his crew. As soon as he left, they took it out by fear of going bankrupt whithin a week. For a tiny jar of this nectar will set you back 15� if you buy in Bar and 40� if in New York.
Other grandees who lost their head about this jam include Mary, Queen of Scots and, briefly, Queen of France too in the 1500s. She said this was like �a ray of sun in a crystal jar�. Indeed the weather of Bar-le-Duc is as sunny as that of Marbella when compared to the Scottish Highlands.
Until the French Revolution there were hundreds of jam makers in Bar-le-Duc, producing up to 100,000 pounds of this jam every year. They became the chic gift for European aristocrats. With the beheading of the social order, the market for those expensive product collapsed overnight. By the second world war less than a hundred jam makers survived. Mr Dutriez's father Jacques bought the last remaining maker of confiture de groseilles from his former boss, Ren� Amiable, in 1974. Mr Dutriez, whom you see on my pictures, transferred the company to his eldest daughter in 2000, and unless things go Mad Max on us, the Dutriez dynasty will rule over red currant jams for a few more generations.
Mr Dutriez showed me how the deseeding works - right fascinating even though he wouldn't let anyone near the copper cauldrons where the jam is cooked. First, he cuts the stem of each currant. If you pull the stem like a Barbarian, most of the flesh will come out, leaving only the skin. You just have to use scissors, explained Dutriez.
What makes this product so special is that normally you can't make red currant jam without including an avalanche of unappetising seeds. Extracting the juice to make a jelly is a pretty straightforward business, but a jam contains the skin and flesh of the fruits - a very different animal. So, sometime in the 14th century, local monks had the idea of removing the seeds of red currants before making the jam. One by one, with a goose quill.
Dutriez grabs a couple of quills, cuts the tip with scissors and starts seeding his red currants. Each �p�pineuse likes to cut her quill in a different way, but the idea is to have a sharp tip and a sort of tube to grab the seeds and remove them, he explains. I ask him if the idea of using goose quills does not frighten clients from America, but Dutriez smiles and says The jam is cooked in sugar at high temperature for a very long time, no germ can survive this. If they did, we would see them in the pots but they are full sterile.
The sharp tip pierces the red currant and grabs the seeds. Depending on the currant, you may have 6 seeds or 20 to remove.
As our �p�pineuses (she-seed-removers) work at home during 3 weeks in June every year. We pay them by the weight of seedless red currants they bring back. Each batch of jam is cooked with the fruits from one �p�pineuse only, so we can tell her the next day how many seeds exactly she missed, said Dutriez with a managerial expression. An experiences �p�pineuse can do 1kg of deseeded fruits in 3 hours, whereas a student will struggle to make 500 grams (1lb) in a whole day.
To make 1kg of deseeded currants, they use about 1.6kg of raw red currants.
The seeded fruits are then added to a hot water syrup made by heating water and an equal amount of sugar in a copper basin. The jams is cooked and the scum is skimmed off until nothing unbecoming a Queen's jam appears in the pot. Then Mr Dutriez pours his ruby-colored nectar into little sterilized crystal jars with the traditional Bar-Le-Duc octogonal shape and closes the lid. We won't see this.
There is another guy who tries to compete with us with his jams, Dutriez said, but he doesn't have our secret. Although we use only water, fruits and sugar, we have a special way to cook the jam that makes it imperishable. You could open a jar in 100 years time and it will be as good as today.
Dutriez makes his jams from both red currants and gooseberries. The red currants look better, but I prefer the more delicate taste of the gooseberry jam - really out of this world. I think this would make a most elegant gift if you can explain to the lady who receives it how and why it was made. On the face of it, it sounds like a ridiculous endeavor, like these guys who cross the desert jogging backward. But the delicate texture of the jam and its exquisite taste will put any prejudice to rest for good. You owe it to yourself to try this once! And if you can't afford it, just beg, borrow or steal some red currant and enlist the help of a friendly goose to lend a quill. It's fun work and can be done in a day. The "secret" in the cooking of the jam is not needed if you will not store your jams for long.
Each jar contains 3oz (85gr) of the precious nectar. Dutriez produces 500 kilograms of jam a year (1000 pounds) - that's as much as the market will take. Only a handful make it to he US nowadays. Back in the 1980s we used to sell 6000 jars a year in the US, mainly through Universal Foods. But when Mitterand arrived, he had communist ministers in his government, and the Reagan administration pressured Universal Food and other US companies who were importing goods from France to terminate their contracts, and we lost that market. A noble cause no doubt, but American foodies are still paying the price and are deprived of this red food nearly a decade after Mitterand followed the footsteps of Mary, Queen of Scots.
This jam has everything to become a hot item in Japan. Centuries-old tradition, made by a long-established company, with delicate personal attention to each and every currant, it is packed in a gorgeous crystal jar and can be kept for long. Japanese people are very fond of delicate gifts and I'm told there is a huge aftermarket to recycle gifts you have received. Who knows how many years such a jar could revolve across the upper stratum of Japanese society before seeing the light of day one last time?
Confitures � la Lorraine
//www.groseille.com
35, Rue de l'�toile
Bar-le-Duc, Lorraine
Tel: +33 (0) 3 29 79 06 81
Fax: +33 (0) 3 29 77 19 74
France
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