Anis de Flavigny

Anis de Flavigny are small sugar-coated sweets made in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, in the Burgundy region of France. At the center of each white pellet is a single anise seed. As you suck on one and the sugar layers grow thinner, the aroma of the seed hidden inside emerges.

A Sugar Coating Built Up Around a Seed

The core is the fruit of green anise, a plant in the Apiaceae (carrot) family. The maker puts the small harvested seeds into a large pan and gradually pours sugar syrup over them as they tumble. Thin layers of coating build up, and the surface becomes smooth as the pellets roll. Craftspeople spend about 15 days turning a core of about 2 milligrams into a sweet of about 1 gram.

Building up a sugar coating around a core in this way is known as the dragée method. Some dragées have an almond at the center, but here a small, strongly aromatic seed is used. When you put one in your mouth, the sweetness of the sugar spreads first, and as you keep sucking and reach the core, the anise aroma comes through.

The Same Core, Different Flavors

Every flavor contains an anise seed, but the flavoring of the sugar layers varies. The flavors include rose, violet, mint, blackcurrant and lemon, and the maker explains that the plant aromas are obtained by distillation or extraction. For mint, steam is passed through the leaves and then cooled to collect the aromatic compounds. Even the rose flavor has an anise core. A single pellet offers both the floral aroma of the outside and the taste of the seed that emerges afterward.

The maker describes green anise, used for the core, separately from star anise, used to flavor the anise variety. Despite their similar names, they are different plants; in the anise flavor, the core seed and the flavoring added to the coating come from different ingredients. The maker says regular products use beet sugar, while the organic range uses unrefined cane sugar, which gives the latter a pale amber color.

From Abbey to Travel Companion

The sweets are made in the former Abbey of Saint-Pierre in Flavigny.

According to tradition, monks began coating the seeds in sugar, but the year the abbey was founded does not in itself show when the candy was invented. The maker’s history states that in 1591 the nearby town of Semur-en-Auxois presented anise to distinguished guests. It is not known whether the gifts given then were the same as today’s sugar confection.

After the Revolution, village confectioners continued production; according to the maker, there were eight of them in 1814. Most made the sweets inside the former abbey, and in 1896 several workshops were merged into one. Jean Troubat, who took over the factory in 1923, expanded sales to vending machines in train and metro stations, department stores and other outlets.

The packaging also changed along with the places where the sweets were sold.

Long, narrow paper boxes were used at first, and in the 1950s they were replaced by metal tins sturdy enough to survive dropping out of vending machines. According to the maker, the tin then became round before taking the oval shape widely known today. Tins depicting a shepherd and shepherdess show a variety of scenes, such as the two drawing close or one offering sweets. Open one of these pocket-sized containers, and you can enjoy a pellet long made in the village even while traveling.

Glossary