Chocolate should always include a little fantasy and alchemy in the recipe, so it’s no surprise to learn that famed Parisian chocolatier Debauve et Gallais, was founded by Sulpice Debauve, a pharmacist to the court of Louis XVI, whose signature chocolate ‘pistoles’ (named after gold coins) were developed as a way of making bitter medicines more palatable for Marie-Antoinette. Knowing of her taste for drinking chocolate, Debauve mixed finely ground cocoa powder with almond milk as a disguise for the medicine, which he set in flat, coin-shaped discs, thus creating the original edible chocolate.
Debauve et Gallais’ chocolate revolution
The pistoles were a hit and, a decade after the revolution, were enjoying enough success for Debauve to open a factory and shop on the Rive Gauche in Faubourg Saint-Germain. What had been an experiment became his vocation.
Over the next decades, Debauve supplied the courts of both Napoleon and the Bourbon kings, partnered with his nephew, Jean-Baptiste Auguste Gallais, and developed new flavours and exquisite formats that are replicated today with all the mastery and knowledge that you would expect from a 220-year old institution.
Debauve et Gallais trades from two listed stores, on rue Vivienne and rue des Saints-Pères, the latter originally a townhouse designed by Napoleon’s favourite architects, Percier and Fontaine. A recent, sensitive modernisation has seen that both stores’ historic interiors remain intact while offering a contemporary customer experience.
Debauve et Gallais continues to sell pistoles, croquamandes (chocolate-coated caramelised almonds created for Napoleon), ganaches and pralines. The pistoles are made from Venezuelan chocolate flavoured variously with almond milk, honey flakes, orange blossom, verbena and vanilla – ingredients that the brand suggests aid sleep and restore energy, as they did for Marie-Antoinette.
And, as fantasy reaches us through the eye first, the chocolates are presented in ribbon-wrapped, re-usable jewel boxes that take their colours from the 1783 ‘Rose’ portrait of Marie-Antoinette by Vigée Le Brun and are embossed with the royal arms and the words ‘fournisseur des rois de France’ (supplier to the kings of France).
