Rillettes

Rillettes are a traditional Touraine peasant preparation, originally a way to preserve pork at the twice-yearly slaughter; the word is first attested in 1480, from dialect 'rille' (a piece or strip of pork), itself from Old French 'reille' (a lath or strip), and is of Tourangelle origin. Rabelais, born nearby at Chinon, praised them as a 'brune confiture de cochon' (brown pig jam), and Balzac exalted the rillettes of Tours in his 1836 novel Le Lys dans la vallée. They long remained a domestic, farmhouse food before town charcutiers in Tours took up the recipe in the 19th century; it was in Le Mans, in the Sarthe, that rillettes gained industrial scale from the late 19th century. There is no single documented inventor. Rillettes de Tours hold a Protected Geographical Indication (IGP), registered in the EU in 2013 after an effort begun in 1992; the rillettes of Le Mans and the Sarthe are not protected by a comparable designation.

Soft and spreadable, almost a savory paste; warm toast melts the fat through it so it turns silky on the tongue. The flavor is deeply porky and well salted, rich with rendered fat, finished with bay, thyme and pepper, and cut by the sharp acidity of a cornichon.

Rillettes are a confit-style preservation: salt cures the meat first, then hours of very gentle cooking in fat (roughly 80 to 90°C, well below a simmer) slowly render the meat tender without frying it. At these temperatures the tough collagen in the connective tissue denatures and hydrolyzes into gelatin, which is why the fibers shred so easily and the paste sets to a soft, sliceable richness when cold. Two barriers do the keeping: the salt cure lowers water activity, and the cap of solidified fat poured over the packed meat excludes air, sealing it from oxidation and microbes much as a wax seal protects a jam. Properly potted and kept cool, rillettes hold for weeks.