Berlingot de Carpentras

The Berlingot de Carpentras is a hard candy from Carpentras in southeastern France, translucent in color with white stripes running through it. When you put one of the small tetrahedrons in your mouth, the hard candy slowly melts, releasing flavors such as mint or fruit.

Turning syrup from candied fruit into candy

The candy of this area has long been connected with the syrup left over from candying fruit. Handcrafted production using the syrup that dripped from candied fruit is said to have been industrialized in the 19th century. Today’s products come in a variety of flavors and in many colors. Some of Carpentras’s mint-flavored berlingots are pink rather than green.

Making the white stripes and the tetrahedral shape

Sugar, water and glucose syrup are boiled down and heated to the stage at which the candy becomes hard and brittle. In a home method, the mixture is taken off the heat, flavoring is added, and it is folded over while cooling on a marble slab, then stretched into a rope and cut on the diagonal. In artisan production, candy that has been pulled to incorporate air and turned white is combined with colored candy to create fine white stripes. It is a confection shaped while the candy is still warm enough to work, using the property of sugar to harden as it cools.

A papal legend, and the record of a woman who worked in the factory

One story about its origins involves Pope Clement V in the 14th century and his cook. According to this tradition, the cook used leftover syrup to make candy, but this story alone cannot establish how today’s candy came into being. In the 19th century, a family business founded in 1851 by Gustave Eysséric advanced the industrialization of production. The departmental archives have traced the life of Marie Rose Bernard, who worked at this factory, through civil registers and company records. Born in Carpentras in 1849, she was hired at the Eysséric family’s factory at the age of 15 and worked on making berlingots for many years. When she received the Legion of Honour in 1929, at the age of 80, she was recorded as having worked for the same employer for 63 years.

Glossary