Archive for the ‘Paris’ category
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Truffle sounds festive high note
Monday, December 27th, 2010
It doesn’t take much truffle to make a difference to all sorts of foods: charcuterie; garnish; timbales; soufflés. Escoffier even cooked them in Champagne for some of his more select diners. For the 2010 festive season, when Isigny Sainte-Mère launched its Camembert with Truffles, regional paper Ouest-France interviewed director general Daniel Delahaye. He remembers truffles [...]
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Snow can spread faster than butter…
Monday, December 20th, 2010
The snow currently falling across Europe is a timely reminder that butter was once a cold weather product. Before the days of universal refrigeration, it was harder to keep butter from going rancid or melting. Not impossible, but a sufficient challenge to ensure it remained the prerogative of rich households. Where available, a buttery or [...]
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Cheese that improves with age…
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
The older a cheese gets, the more water it loses. However, a totally dehydrated cheese would not taste of anything. One of the challenges when maturing longlived cheeses like Mimolette is to ensure that it retains enough water to be edible, since the process is irreversible. The cheese grader’s skill is to be able to [...]
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A treat in store
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
As every Camembert is wrapped before going into its box, bear in mind that it is a living cheese and needs to breathe. That is why at least half the box will be made of wood, since boxes made completely of cardboard tend to go soggy, while the cheese does not travel well. The Camembert [...]
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The Camembert legend (2)
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Endorsed by the Emperor himself, Camembert could hardly fail to take Paris by storm, as well as many provincial capitals. There was a very real result from these early travels: originally wrapped simply in paper, it rapidly became clear that something more substantial was needed to protect the ripening cheeses on their journey.In the 1890s, [...]
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Visits are good for business
Monday, June 29th, 2009
When Henri Babeur addressed the cooperative’s 25th anniversary celebrations in 1957, he stressed the fundamental importance of maintaining direct contact with customers. “We will continue encouraging and intensifying direct personal contact between farmers, factory workers and customers, by organising collective visits, as we have done in the past,” he explained. “This will enable all of [...]
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Isigny visits Paris for Concours général agricole
Monday, May 25th, 2009
As well as receiving trade visitors from Paris, in 1934 the Isigny dairy cooperative started to enter its products for the Concours général agricole (CGA), France’s annual national food and farming contest. This competition was set up by the French state in 1870 and is reserved for agricultural products, either in their original state or [...]
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Visits become part of butter calendar
Monday, May 25th, 2009
The first group of visiting crémiers must have talked about little else than Isigny on their return from Normandy. The visit to Isigny sur Mer for a study tour became an annual fixture for the Parisians, for whom the invitation to Isigny was a source of both inspiration and enlightenment. Visiting a farm in the [...]
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Visits build knowledge and confidence
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Henri Babeur was quick to build the confidence of customers by inviting them to visit Isigny sur Mer. Whatever the Paris crémier was to tell Parisian customers needed to be based on the cremier’s own observations to be credible. Working with Georges Picou, the Parisian wholesale trader, Babeur organised a special train and cars to [...]
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The ‘little cooperative’ faces tough start
Monday, May 25th, 2009
After much work, including the construction of a new factory, the Isigny cooperative opened for business in December 1932. Taking in just over four and a half tonnes of milk a day, the new business struggled. Newly-appointed director Jacques de Lussan worked with a skeleton staff of half a dozen to manage the complete process. [...]
