The dragee: an eternal fruit
The dragee is steeped in history. The Roman confectioner Julius Dragatus would have inadvertently dropped an almond in honey, around the year 177 BC. In France, this is the thirteenth century that the coated tablet as we know it appeared. At the time, apothecaries coated their pills with cane sugar. It is in Verdun that one of them has the idea of coating an almond. This dragee or "chamber spice" is given digestive and fertility properties.
It is offered to the people during the royal coronations, and Louis XIV made the delicacy of his court, ordering that the children are given schools every 1st of the year. The Medici and Catherine particularly favored its growth throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, and soon all the kings had their pocket bezel.
Dragees: Five Wishes to Happiness
A guarantee of immortality, sugared almonds are offered during baptisms since the Middle Ages. It is also said that five almonds representing five wishes were distributed to the bridegrooms: happiness, fertility, abundance, sharing and welcome. We were inspired by this ancestral custom to thank the guests by offering them five dragees. "A candy is to offer happiness, it is to wish a long life, and it is also a sign of thanks," says Marie-Odile Burlot at Jeff Martial's Bruges, Martial home is one of the great specialists lozenge since the mid-nineteenth century.
Even today, the image of pleasure, prosperity and sharing is strong, and the dragee is "the confectionery of great events, marriage in mind, and the almond is the fruit of predilection. These are the coatings that evolve, to fill all the desires ", finishes Jacques Charnay, leader of the house Medici, specialized in this confectionery since 1952.
