Vendée: What is the secret of the ass's success?

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20 minutes

  • For Easter, “20 Minutes” takes you to Vendée to get to know the anus, an egg pudding flan.

  • The name of the product is obviously very entertaining.

There are small, medium and very large ones.

The fion, a traditional Vendée pastry, is available in several sizes.

Thérèse Rorthais, manager of the “Les Fournées de la Vie” brand in Aizenay in Vendée, has made it her specialty.

“Our notoriety comes from the anus,” even considers Michel, her husband.

The couple and their twelve employees also make brioche, waste, fouasse, prefou ... but the ass seems to be the pastry of which they are most proud.

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>> To read also: What is the secret of the success of the famous Vendée brioche?

"Fion, it comes from flan [fiun] in Vendée dialect," explains the husband, who before getting involved was a computer scientist.

It is composed of a paste scalded with water.

In it, we add a preparation called fionnaïe [in patois], eggs pudding with cinnamon, vanilla or even orange blossom.

Then, we bake everything in the oven ... "

An Easter specialty

This pastry (to be eaten rather cold) is known in the north-western quarter of the department.

In the region of Challans or Saint-Jean-de-Monts in particular, we speak of maraîchin flan.

In the Aizenay sector, we keep to the name of fion… and we claim that the recipe, the size and the taste of the product are different.

"It is an Easter specialty because it is the period during which the hens lay in abundance," specifies Fabienne Couton-Laine of the Vendée expansion tourism center.

From Good Friday, we prepare the crusts.

On Saturday, we put the fionnaïe [eggs pudding] in them and then we cook everything.

You can only taste the ass after Easter Sunday Mass ... If you don't respect that, you run the risk of the worst trouble!

This is the legend.

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>> To read also: What is the secret of the success of the Nantes cake?

At the “Fournées de la Vie”, 40,000 medium-sized (4-6 portions) and 80,000 individually sized are produced per year.

And this Easter weekend, 600 to 700 fions will be designed with “high edges” and “for 6 to 8 people”.

“Few bakers and pastry chefs make them in Vendée because the operating mode is complicated,” continues Michel.

It takes time.

It's hard and long.

And it takes a bit of a hand to get the dough into the mold.

Thérèse, a former teacher, masters it perfectly.

“It's a family affair,” she smiles.

My grandmother did it.

I created this to keep old recipes going.

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A not very graceful name, jokes galore

As for the schoolboy remarks concerning the name “fion”, Thérèse and Michel have heard everything.

And above all, always the same jokes.

“In the salons, people stop because they see that it is written“ ass ”, it amuses them, it calls out to them… and they taste and appreciate.

"Yet not very" graceful ", the name would even be an asset, according to Thérèse and Michel.

"If it was written simply 'custard', people wouldn't pay so much attention to the product and taste…"

A few years ago, the two Agésinates (inhabitants of Aizenay) received some untimely phone calls.

"Drunk young people were leaving messages on our answering machine ..." recalls Michel.

The "fashion" seems to have passed, even if the name of this pastry always gives rise to a smile.

“On a living room, one day, a gentleman put his finger in one of my fions, I can assure you, he had paid for it!

He looked at me and he said to me: “This is the first time that I put a finger in the anus on a living room…” “The anus, we never tire of it.

This humor, a little more.

  • Video

  • 20 minutes video

  • Gastronomy

  • Fingers full

  • Pastry

  • Sugar