Pain au chocolat or chocolatine? The definitive map. As the acclaimed French singer Charles Aznavour once sang, “enveloppés tout frais dans du papier de soie, comme un cadeau du ciel, exquise friandise, des petits pains au chocolat…” (“wrapped fresh in tissue paper, like a gift from heaven, exquisite delicacies, the little pains au chocolat…”). In any event, however much we may argue about how to call it, we can all agree on one thing: eating this viennoiserie is a true delight. At the end of his study, he was able to draw a map where we can see that pain au chocolat is the designation used in most of the country, followed by chocolatine (also used in Quebec), petit pain au chocolat –in some areas of the north and the northeast–and croissant au chocolat, used in the northeast as well. French linguist Mathieu Avanzi polled thousands of French-speaking people in order to identify the usage of all the different variations. Nevertheless, while the great debate revolves around chocolatine and pain au chocolat, there are also other denominations in France. In the French southwest, the sweet roll filled with chocolate we are talking about is called chocolatine. In fact, in this region of France, the pain au chocolat is not a pastry, but an actual piece of bread with a chocolate bar. “No, no, here we don’t call it like that…” was the answer. I used to live in Bayonne, in the southwest of France, and I still remember the first time I referred to the pain au chocolat as… pain au chocolat. I had the chance to experience this by myself. In fact, the matter has even reached the French parliament some years ago! Let’s take a deeper look into the different denominations of this viennoiserie in France, for it has been a subject of debate for years. France: chocolatine or pain au chocolat ? However, there is one country where the different ways of calling this viennoiserie have truly split the population: France. In Spain, for example, the pains au chocolat are commonly known as napolitanas de chocolate –literally “chocolate Neapolitans”, although they don’t really come from Naples…– in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, they mostly refer to them as chocolate croissants in the Netherlands, you will find them under the name of chocoladebroodje and,in Belgium, they are called couques au chocolat. As a result, we can find many variations of its denomination. It seems that for the time being the true origin will remain shrouded in mystery…Īlthough we can’t know the real origin of these delicious sweet rolls, what we can affirm is that they are popular in countless places all around the globe. However, the French food historian Jim Chevallier, who published a book about Zang and the origin of the croissant, states that this may not be entirely true, since the denomination “ croissant” came after Zang made the Kipferl (Austria’s original croissants)popular in France. According to this theory, in his Viennese Bakery in Paris he would have baked Schokoladencroissants (croissants filled with chocolate). The most popular one holds that it was an Austrian military official, August Zang, who imported them from Austria to France back in the 1830s. The origin of pain au chocolat is not utterly clear there are many different theories about who came up with the idea of wrapping a chocolate stick with a laminated dough. But do you know where pain au chocolat really comes from? And do you know that, if you go to Bordeaux, you may prefer to order a chocolatine, s’il vous plaît ? Keep reading to find out! The history of the pain au chocolat This delicious sweet roll with a chocolate stick in the inside is probably, along with the croissant, one of the most well-known French delicacies. We could easily say that pain au chocolat is one of the most renowned viennoiseries around the world. The MyHEH platform hosts hundreds of personal stories about European history, culture, heritage and much more, covering the period from the beginning of the 20th century up to the present day.
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