Canelé

A canelé is a small French pastry flavored with rum and vanilla with a soft and tender custard center and a dark, thick caramelized crust. It takes the shape of a small, striated cylinder up to five centimeters in height with a depression at the top. A specialty of the region around Bordeaux in southwestern France, today it is widely available in pâtisseries in France and abroad. The canelé is believed to originate from the Couvent des Annonciades, Bordeaux in either the 15th or the 18th century. (Though the article about this same pastry in the French Wikipedia Canelé says "Différentes théories tentent de construire une histoire plus ancienne mais manquent totalement de fondement." "Different theories attempt to construct a more ancient history but lack any foundation whatever.") The modern word "canelé" originates in Gascon, which was spoken in Bordeaux and a large area of southwestern France until the 19th century. In Limoges, there was a food called canole, a bread made with flour and egg yolks, which may be the same item as that sold in Bordeaux since the 18th century under the name of canaule, also written canaulé or canaulet. Artisans known as canauliers who specialized in baking them registered a Corporation (or guild) with the Parliament of Bordeaux in 1663, which allowed only them to produce several specific foods: Blessed bread, canaules, and Retortillons. Since they were not a part of the Pastry Corporation (Guild), which had a monopoly over baking with milk and sugar or mixtionnée dough, they were prohibited from using those ingredients. The canauliers disputed the Pastry Chefs' privileges and on 3 March 1755 the council of State in Versailles ruled for the canauliers and ended the Pastry Chefs' monopoly. An edict of 1767 limited the number of authorized canaulier shops in a city to eight. It created very strict requirements for joining the profession. Nevertheless, in 1785 there were at least 39 canaulier shops in Bordeaux, at least ten of which were in the district (faubourg) of Saint-Seurin. The French Revolution abolished all the Corporations, but later census rolls continue to show shops of Canauliers and bakers of "blessed bread".

Source: Wikipedia