French Regional Cookies

Most of the cookies you’ll encounter in French restaurants and pastry shops are prepared using elaborate methods that have evolved over the centuries in European kitchens. And while most of these concoctions are delicious, and some are brilliant in their conception, the simple understatement of regional specialities is often more appealing.

Most French regional cookies and other pastries predate their classic descendants and are more likely to reflect the cooking of centuries past because no one has updated them. In some regions, these pastries contain spices such as ginger, allspice, or anise seeds that are remnants of medieval cooking, or citrus flavorings, often in the form of orange flower water, that were popular in the sixteenth century. Nowadays, sweet pastries are almost always made with butter, but in parts of France, regional specialties are sometimes still made with fats—such as olive oil in Provence, nut oils in the Périgord, and goose or duck fat in Gascony—that until recently were the only ones available or affordable. Other ingredients, such as pine nuts, almonds, or hazelnuts, indigenous to particular regions, are also common in regional desserts.