Pastille de Vichy: The Sweet That Started as a Medicine
About this episode
This episode explores the history and significance of Pastille de Vichy, a confection that originated as a medicine in France.
Pastille de Vichy: The Sweet That Started as a Medicine | Food Tour de France Pastille de Vichy — the small octagonal white tablet that has been made in Vichy since 1825, that entered the French pharmacopoeia as a medicine in 1837 and that 3.6 million of are produced every single day — is one of the most recognisable and most historically fascinating confections in France. Today's Food Tour de France episode passes through Vichy — the elegant Belle Époque spa town on the Allier river, famous for its mineral springs, its grand hotels and its complicated history — and tells the full story of a sweet invented by a member of both the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine, refused by Napoleon's ministry on the grounds of complexity and eventually turned into one of the most distinctive regional confections in the whole of France. The octagonal shape. The word VICHY on one side. Thermal Establishment on the other. A sweet that sits in that uniquely French space between medicine and confection — and has always been entirely comfortable there. The episode covers the full history of the pastille de Vichy — from Jean-Pierre-Joseph d'Arcet's discovery of the digestive virtues of…
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