Berlingot

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

berlingot a French sweet made from boiled sugar, striped with pulled sugar. These sweets are made all over France, but the best known are from Carpentras, where berlingots in their current form (shaped like humbugs, although an official definition describes them as being ‘of indefinable shape’) have been manufactured since the mid-19th century. Flavourings include mint (most commonly), coffee, aniseed, and many sorts of fruit essence. It is the stripes of pulled sugar which seem to distinguish the berlingots de Carpentras from those made elsewhere, for example at Nantes (which city may have a better claim to be the place of origin of the berlingot, which was already known in the Nantais version in the 18th century).