Name: Chocolatine.
Age: About 180. Originated with an Austrian baker, August Zang, who opened a boulangerie in Paris in the 1830s selling Viennese croissants with chocolate called schokoladencroissants. Schokoladen transliterated into French as chocolatine.
How absolutely fascinating. Looks awfully like a pain au chocolat to me. Do not use that hated term!
But you have to admit, it does look like a … Please, down here in the south-west of France we have been fighting this loathsome cultural imperialism for almost two centuries.
What on earth are you on about? Cultural and linguistic apartheid, that’s what. Zang’s schokoladencroissant and the chocolate-and-bread sandwich French schoolchildren had been eating for generations became indistinguishable in the course of the 19th century. Most of France called the resulting pastry a pain au chocolat, but in the old region of Gascony in the south-west it has always been known as the chocolatine.
Why? One theory is that Zang’s chocolatine coalesced with an existing local word, chicolatina.
Who cares? Everyone in Gascony, that’s who. Ten parliamentary deputies from the south-west last week tabled a motion demanding that the term chocolatine be given the same status as pain au chocolat. “This is not just a chocolatine amendment,” said Aurélien Pradié, a young deputy from Lot. “It’s an amendment that aims to protect popular expressions that give value to culinary expertise.” This is more about the past than the pastry.
Didn’t Voltaire say that? Unfortunately not.
I really don’t see that what you call it matters. You fail to understand the power of words. The pain au chocolat v chocolatine struggle – the “eternal debate”, as one French news website calls it – is the symbol of a battle between the capital and the regions, modernity and tradition, Macron technocrats and regional rightwingers. The rebel deputies said they want to defeat the “pain au chocolat snobbery of our Parisian colleagues”.
And did they? Non! The deputies in the national assembly voted the amendment to give the two names equal status down. Pain au chocolat remains the official term.
Sacré bleu! Bien sûr, vous réalisez cela signifie la guerre. Mais naturellement.
Not to be confused with: Croissant au chocolat (the term used in Alsace), petit pain au chocolat (Hauts-de-France), couque au chocolat (Ardennes) and those unspeakable greasy objects that pass for pains au chocolat in the UK.
Do say: “It’s what it tastes like that matters, not what you call it.”
Don’t say: “Shouldn’t you be writing about Italy’s constitutional crisis?”
