Pate de Fruits

Pate de fruits is a traditional French confection of fruit puree set with pectin and sugar. The confection reaches back to the medieval and early-modern tradition of fruit preservation in sugar, when cooking fruit with sugar was the principal way to capture the harvest. The Auvergne region is particularly associated with pate de fruits, where the local fruit — apricots, pears, chestnuts — was cooked into firm, sliceable jellies; the city of Clermont-Ferrand has a long pate de fruits tradition. The modern pate de fruits as a small, individual, sugar-dusted candy is a refinement of the confectioner's art, particularly associated with the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A pate de fruits is a small square, dusted with a crust of coarse sugar that crunches under the tooth, giving way to a tender-firm, intensely fruit-flavored jelly. The flavor is single-note and pure — apricot, raspberry, quince, or whatever fruit was used — far more concentrated than a fresh fruit, with a clean, bright finish. Eaten as a small sweet, often with coffee, or given as a gift.

Pate de fruits is a pectin-set fruit jelly. Fruit puree is cooked with sugar and apple pectin to a high temperature — typically around one hundred and seven degrees — at which the pectin, activated by the acid in the fruit and the high sugar concentration, sets into a firm gel as it cools. The high sugar content serves two purposes: it preserves the candy by lowering water activity, and it raises the boiling point, allowing the pectin to concentrate sufficiently. The firm, sliceable texture is the result of the pectin-sugar-acid interaction; the dusting of coarse sugar on the cut surfaces prevents sticking and adds a crunchy contrast. The fruit flavor is concentrated because the long cooking drives off water, leaving the volatile esters and acids of the fruit in a small volume.