For any visitor to Bordeaux, there are two essential things to taste: wine and the canelé, Bordeaux’s rum- and vanilla-flavoured, emblematic pastry. But did you know that the invention of the latter certainly draws its origin from the first?
Indeed, in the 18th century, an essential step in the winemaking process required the use of beaten egg whites: for fining. This process favored the coagulation of unstable particles in the wine and optimized its filtration.
Legend has it that the nuns of the Annonciades Convent, tired of the waste, had the idea of using unused egg yolks to make cakes.
Canelas or canelon would therefore be at the origin of this little Bordeaux cake. Unfortunately for us, the archives and archaeological excavations have failed to find traces of the molds giving the shape so characteristic of the canelé and to validate this hypothesis.
But if its origin remains a bit mysterious, it is nonetheless true that the key ingredients of this delicacy remain intimately linked to the wine-growing activity of Bordeaux and its port.
Not only egg yolk but also vanilla, cane sugar and rum that arrived from America by boat in the Port of the Moon, Bordeaux.
Photo by Asgeir Pedersen, Spots France.
Text by Blanche de Balincourt.
