Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast · Andrew Prior

Revisit Pain D'Epice

·23 min·1 clip

By the 10th century, a honey-and-spice spread known as Mekong had reached travellers and merchants.

Andrew Pryor returns to pain d'épice for the festive season. He treats it as a comforting, nostalgic French classic and starts from the idea that food history matters as much as recipes, because the treat carries ritual and the stories passed down through generations. Dijon is where the story deepens. He reaches back to the 14th century, to Margaret of Flanders and Duke Philip the Bold, and to a wheat flour and honey bread tied to Dijon that later becomes the spiced loaf listeners know today. The bread keeps changing. A millet flour variant called pan de gouderie appears in the thread, and the show uses that detail to show how regional ingredients and naming conventions shape what survives. Commercial gingerbread enters next. Barnaby Boitier of Lange is presented as a key figure in the manufacture of gingerbread in Dijon, with an 1804 advertisement listing his range of gingerbreads, health gingerbread, marzipan croquettes, and orange blossom sweets. The family line continues. In 1838 the store and manufacturing pass to Louis Moulin, then to his son-in-law, and in 1901 to Louis-Auguste Petitjean, which gives the business the Moulin and Petitjean name it still carries. A tasting changes everything. Pryor recalls a 2015 visit with his husband, the on the spot translation that saved the visit, and the moment the sample of pain d'épice made him love it properly. The recipe is the real hook. He explains that Dijon gingerbread is made with sourdough, wheat flour, honey, sugar, egg yolks, and spices such as anise, and that the mixture rests for two weeks before the final ingredients go in. There is even a lighter note. Because of the sourdough method, he says, it carries about 3% less fat than other versions. Regional rules matter. Reims gingerbread has to use rye flour, while Dijon gingerbread belongs to pain d'épice, and the episode makes that distinction feel like part of the culture rather than a technical footnote. Moulin and Petitjean remains central. It is still making pain d'épice and other treats today, and the episode leaves you with the sense that a good French sweet can be both local heritage and something you want to come back to.

As heard by us

A warm gingerbread history that turns a Christmas treat into French food culture.

Pain d'epice turns into a tidy little history walk, starting in Dijon and settling into the comfort of winter. It moves from old bread traditions to commercial gingerbread making, then into the Moulin and Petitjean story, so the piece feels grounded without losing its seasonal…

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Why you'd press play

You want a cosy French winter listen about gingerbread, history, and festive tradition.

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