pruneaux

If you remember the episode in Le Tour de Gaule d’Astérix in which a treacherous Agenais innkeeper tries to capture Astérix and Obélix by slipping a Mickey into their prunes you will be shocked to learn that this is a flagrant anachronism.

The ancestors of Agen’s prunes were brought over from the Middle East by horticulturally minded monks who accompanied the local Crusaders in 1148. They grafted them on to local plum trees, creating the little light purple Prune d’Ente (from the Old French ‘enter’, to graft).

These took at once to the local soil and climate, and people soon learned to dry them out to become the famous pruneaux d’Agen. The Lot-et-Garonne produces, on average, 30,000 tonnes a year. For big fat juicy ones, look for pruneaux mi-cuits.