Rousquille

The rousquille is a sweet with a white sugar glaze, popular in Roussillon, in French Catalonia. It is especially associated with the Vallespir, at the foot of the Pyrenees. When you bite into the ring of dough, the glaze on the surface cracks crisply, and the soft baked dough beneath it comes apart. Aromas of lemon or anise are also characteristic.

Baked, then coated in white glaze

Baking the dough alone does not give the sweet its white appearance. At the Touron confectionery in Arles-sur-Tech, the dough is baked, glazed by hand and then dried. In the products of Confiserie du Tech, the soft dough is covered with a thin layer of meringue. Unlike a finish of simply dusting with powdered sugar, the white layer itself creates a contrast in texture with the inside.

André Chénier, a baker and confectioner in Bages, says that if the glaze is too thick it hides the flavor of the dough, and if it is too runny it does not coat properly. He does everything by hand, up to dipping the baked dough into the sweet liquid and moving it onto a rack to let the excess drip off. His dough uses butter, honey from Céret, sugar, lemon essential oil and flour.

Chénier developed his own rousquille using an old recipe he found in a cupboard as a starting point. He reportedly held tastings with friends every week and took several years to perfect it. Even for a sweet with few ingredients, it takes repeated work to adjust the baking and the consistency of the glaze.

The ring shape, and a name that crosses borders

The name rousquille is linked to the Catalan word rosquilla. A French dictionary of regional languages also records a related word that came in from Béarnese. In Spain, too, rosquillas include ring-shaped fried and baked sweets, with a variety of flavorings and toppings. The rousquille, which combines a white glaze with a soft dough, is the form that took root in Northern Catalonia within this broad family of sweets sharing the name.

The hole in the ring is also said to have served a purpose in carrying the sweets. Sellers in the past reportedly threaded them onto long poles, carried the poles on their shoulders, and took them to markets and festivals. The Touron confectionery also relates this way of selling them threaded on poles as part of the history of its sweets.

However, the shapes are not always the same. Culinary sources on Roussillon include examples made without a hole at shops in Amélie-les-Bains and Arles-sur-Tech. The regional-language dictionary also records a figure-eight shape, so the variety is too wide to be reduced to a single type based on the diameter of the ring or the hole alone. A sweet of the same name is also made in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, in the Béarn region on the western side of the Pyrenees. A 2009 account of a visit to a confectionery there describes examples baked in pretzel shapes or as small sticks, then coated in lemon-flavored syrup and dried.

Flavors handed down shop by shop

A local tradition credits Robert Séguéla of Amélie-les-Bains with creating the modern rousquille. Meanwhile, the Touron family of Arles-sur-Tech cherishes its own recipe, handed down since the 19th century. Today, the shop still makes the lemon aroma and softness its hallmarks. While individual shops have such histories of their recipes, it is not certain when the sweet as a whole came into being.

Rousquilles are made not only in mountain towns but also near Perpignan. Confiserie du Tech, founded in 1964 by André Laboume, started as a small chocolate workshop and later developed its own rousquille. Its product carries the aromas of both lemon and anise, and today it is also available in a smaller size and individually wrapped. Among sweets of the same name, there are those perfected through trial and error in a workshop and those packed in boxes and distributed widely.

According to the company history, for Laboume the rousquille was a sweet that reminded him of family meals in his childhood. It is a memory of a white sweet eaten as an after-meal treat or a snack, which he went on to make at his own shop as well.

Glossary