If you look at a French calendar on February 2nd, instead of Groundhog Day it will say Chandeleur. Your dictionary will translate that to Candlemas. But what’s that to do with crêpes?
The name Chandeleur comes from chandelle, the French term for candles (fancy ones, those you put on a birthday cake would be bougies). The fête des chandelles or Chandeleur has both pagan and Christian origins, like many Christian celebrations. In the Christian religion it corresponds to the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. The date is no accident, February 2nd marks 40 days after Christmas, and it concludes the Christmas-Epiphany season.
After the King Cake on Epiphany, the crêpes on Chandeleur symbolize the sun whose return was awaited impatiently by the farmers at the end of the winter.
A custom said to bring prosperity to the household consisted in turning the first crêpe with the right hand while holding a coin (even better, a gold coin!) in the left. French educational journalist Jamy Gourmaud makes a nice demonstration in his Chandeleur video (at 1’45).
Today, Chandeleur is an important occasion for the French to bake and eat crêpes. Even my local fromager had a crêpe stand a few days before Chandeleur this year!
What’s your favorite crêpe topping? Mine is the Nutella/banana/shredded coconut combo.
As first a settlement and later a city, Paris has existed for over 2,000 years. History has left its marks on the city, and traces of different time periods can be found all around Paris. In non-chronological order, let’s look at some that you might have come past during a visit without knowing.
If you have been driving on the roads of northwestern France, maybe you have noticed stone markers with a flame in addition to regular distance markers. The bornes de la liberté are set along the route of the Allied Forces from D-Day in June 1944. Liberty Road (la Voie de la Liberté) starts in Normandy, travels across northern France to Metz near the German border and then northwards to Bastogne on the border of Luxemburg and Belgium. But other markers can be found outside of this main route.
In March 1941, following the battle of Kufra in Libya, Leclerc (then a colonel) and his men swear an oath to “not put down the arm until our colours fly over the cathedral of Strasburg”. They fulfilled their oath in November of the same year. But before they could liberate Strasburg, they had to liberate Paris.
In August 1944, the Second Armored Division, in French 2e Division Blindée shortened to 2e DB, marched into Paris from the south. Commanded by the now General Leclerc, it was also called the Division Leclerc.
This monument commemorates not only the Oath of Kufra and the Liberation itself but also the events in this town the 2e DB crossed.
Traces of the combat in Paris in August 1944 can be found–among other places–on the wall of the Paris School of Mines on the boulevard Saint Michel (6tharrondissement, near the Luxemburg Gardens).
The avenue d’Orléans, in the 14tharrondissement leading from the Porte d’Orléans to the Place Denfert-Rochereau is today called Avenue du Général Leclerc.
Map of Paris showing the Avenue du Général Leclerc (the lower point) and the wall of the Paris School of Mines (the upper point).
The Galette des Rois, the King Cake, has a long tradition in France. It is eaten on or around Epiphany, Kings’ Day, January 06, celebrating the visit of the Wise Men, or Three Kings.
The tradition associated with the galette, however, is much older and goes back to Ancient Rome, where during the Saturnalia, a festival around the end of December and the beginning of January, among others, a “King of the Saturnalia” was elected, according to certain sources, with a bean hidden in a cake.
Throne of the French King, château royal d’Amboise
The tradition lived on through the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance where it so happened that one Kings’ Day, the real king, François Ier, after much feasting and celebrating and drinking, wasn’t happy about the “elected” king and with his friends started a snowball fight against him. During that fight, he was hit in the face by a snowball containing a hard object, leaving a permanent scar that he hid by growing a beard, setting a new trend among the male members of the nobility.
François Ier without and with a beard (by Jean Clouet and Titian respectively)
For King Cake celebrations at (by then bearded) François Ier’s court, I recommend this excellent blog post by fellow writer Julianne Douglas.
Even the Sun King Louis XIV kept up the tradition, but the French Revolution tried to do away with it, for obvious reasons. The feast of Epiphany was changed to the Sans-Culottes Day (during the Revolution, sans-culottes, literally “without breeches”, were the common people of the lower classes); however the sans-culottes changed the day to the “Day of Good Neighbors” and the cake became the galette de l’Égalité (Equality Cake) and returned to the table.
Today, it can be found in bakeries and supermarkets as early as Christmas, filled with frangipane or in variants including apples or chocolate. The bean (fève in French) has long since been replaced by a porcelain figurine, the collectors of which are called fabophiles.
In this video, Jamy Gourmaud explains the reason: The king of the day had to pay the drinks for everyone, and people would rather swallow the bean than incur the cost. To stop that practice, the real beans were replaced with porcelain ones. Each cake sold comes with a paper crown for the person who finds the fève in their part.
The cake is cut in as many parts as there are people, and the youngest person in the room hides under the table and announces who gets the next part to be served. The person who finds the fève in their part gets to wear the crown and to choose their queen or king consort.
King Louis XV’s crown (Louvre, Paris)
The only King Cake in France that does not contain a fève is the one served at the Élysée Palace for the President because, in holding with the principles of the French Revolution, one cannot be at the same time president and king.
In France, and even more so in Paris, a place royale, literally a royal square, was meant to surround a royal statue, mostly an equestrian statue in the Roman tradition, but later also pedestrian statues. People could walk in the square and admire the statue of their king. There are five places royales in Paris that have undergone changes over the course of history.
1 – Place des Vosges
Initial name: Place Royale Inauguration: 1612 Statue: Louis XIII Origin of the name: The French Département Vosges (in eastern France), was the first to pay its taxes under the French Revolution. Location: Marais, 4tharrondissement Story: Ordered by Henri IV, it was inauguration at the occasion of the engagement of Louis XIII with Anne of Austria.
2 – Place Dauphine
Inauguration: 1614 Statue: no statue in the square, but a statue of Henri IV stands in the middle of the Pont Neuf Origin of the name: Named for the Dauphin, the heir apparent, the future Louis XIII. Location: Île de la Cité, 1starrondissement Story: Created by Henri IV following the construction of the Pont Neuf. (It’s actually a triangle, by the way.)
3 – Place des Victoires
Inauguration: 1686 Statue: Louis XIV as Roman Emperor Origin of the name: in celebration of the military victories of Louis XIV Location: 1st and 2ndarrondissements Story: Financed by the Duke de la Feuillade, Marshal of France, it is the first square created by a private individual to celebrate his sovereign. (Also it is actually a circle, not a square.)
4 – Place Vendôme
Initial name: Place Louis Le Grand (Louis XIV) Other names: Place des Conquêtes (Conquests Square), and during the Revolution, Place des Piques (Pike Square, from the pikes on which were displayed the heads of the beheaded by the guillotine) Inauguration: 1699 Statue: initially Louis XIV (destroyed in 1792), presently Napoléon Ier at the top of the column Origin of the current name: The square was built in the place of the Hôtel de Vendôme, a hôtel particulier or townhouse. Location: 1starrondissement between rue de la Paix and the Tuileries Gardens Story: Initiated by Louis XIV, his grand project never saw the light of day. In the end, the square was built by the City of Paris. One of its prestigious addresses houses the Ritz.
5 – Place de la Concorde
Initial name: Place Louis XV Other name: Place de la Révolution Inauguration: 1772 Statue: Louis XV, destroyed and replaced by the Egyptian obelisk Origin of the name: Reconciliation of the French people at the end of the Terror (bloody period during the French Revolution) Location: 8tharrondissement, between the Tuileries Gardens and the Champs-Élysées, on the “royal axis” Story: During the Terror, it was the location of the guillotine where among many others, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette were beheaded.
Chestnuts (châtaignes or marrons) are the fruit of the chestnut tree, le châtaignier, which is native to the Mediterranean region but also grows in more northern parts of Europe, including all of France and Germany. Notably in the regions of the Cévennes and the Limousin in south-central France, chestnuts used to be an important food source, hence the tree’s nickname of arbre à pain, bread tree.
Dried and ground, the chestnuts make for a kind of flour that needs to be mixed with some wheat flour in order to make bread, pancakes, or pastries, which you find mainly in Corsica.
The département of Ardèche (in south-eastern France) is famous for its chestnut specialty crème de marrons, chestnut cream, which you can purchase at any French supermarket in the jam section.
If you are looking for roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, follow their cries of “Chauds les marrons!” Another French specialty are marrons glacés, candied chestnuts, a popular Christmas sweet.
The sweet chestnut is not to be confused with the horse chestnuts, utterly inedible. The horse chestnut tree is the one producing white pyramids of flowers that are called candles in German.
During a recent walk in the woods—I write this as of mid-November—I came across a group of chestnut trees that had the ground littered with chestnuts. Some were still in their burrs, but most lay among the leaves. Picking them up proved more fun than expected, for as soon as I had spotted one chestnut, I suddenly saw them everywhere. Within a few short minutes, I had collected 650g of them.
I’d never made roasted chestnuts myself, I usually buy them from a street vendor. But I found a very simple recipe I’d like to share here.
Roasted Chestnuts
Rinse your chestnuts and let them dry. Then make an X-shaped incision into each.
Preheat the oven to 220°C (about 430°F).
Put the chestnuts into the oven on a baking sheet or into a flat oven dish for about 20-25 minutes, until they begin to blacken.
Let them cool down before removing the skin which is not edible (or at least, not very digestible). Enjoy.
