La Nantaise de Confiserie: The Rigolette, a Candy from Nantes Since 1902

Every French city has a candy it grew up with. In Nantes it is the Rigolette: a thin shell of cooked sugar around a soft, flowing heart of fruit, created in 1902 and still made in the city by La Nantaise de Confiserie, from its shop and workshop on the rue de Verdun.

A sugar town

Nantes was once the sugar capital of France. When the colonial sugar trade faded, the city’s confectioners took over, and the port became a center for candy and cookies. The Rigolette belongs to that moment, and it soon stood alongside the harder berlingot as one of the candies that meant Nantes.

A confectioner, an opera and a cat

In 1902 a confectioner named Charles Bohu perfected a new kind of candy, a crisp shell of sugar wrapped around a melting center of fruit pulp, a technical feat that quickly won it a following. Bohu loved the opera and had named his cat Rigolette, after Verdi’s Rigoletto. The cat is said to have disappeared on the very day he finished the recipe, and the candy has carried her name ever since.

His shop stood at 26 rue de la Marne. In 1930 it was transformed into a luxurious confectionery with a blue and gold mosaic façade, in the manner of the city’s great cookie brands, LU and BN, and the storefront can still be seen today.

The same recipe for more than a century

The method has not changed. The sugar shell is cooked with steam, then filled with fruit pulp flavored with black currant, lemon, mandarin, raspberry or pineapple, in the bright colors that make a handful of Rigolettes recognizable at a glance. The house also makes seasonal flavors, fruit pastes, berlingots, caramels, nougats and chocolates, but the five original Rigolettes remain its signature.

We carry the classic assortment of the five flavors, Rigolette Nantaise Candies, in two sizes: 30 g, the pocket-sized treat, and 230 g, the one to share or to give.

How we serve them

• In a candy dish with the coffee, at the end of a meal.
• The small size in a coat pocket or a lunch box.
• The large size as a hostess gift, or tucked into a Christmas stocking.

Read the full story on our La Nantaise de Confiserie page or see the La Nantaise de Confiserie collection.