> And in 2009, nine years after its purchase by Unilever, France's biggest Dijon producer, Amora-Maille (which makes Maille mustard), closed its Dijon factory, moving production to the nearby commune of Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur.
Before you bring out the pitchforks about this heinous act of culinary imperialism by a soulless British megacorp, check Google Maps: Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur is all of 9 km away from the center of Dijon.
This is common in Europe as some industries started long time ago inside or by the city centre and current laws forbid industrial areas grow, so growing factory means moving factory to another place further away from populated area.
this is a very stupid law in my opinion. There is a push from city dwellers to ban cars, but when you work in a factory which is 10km away from the city how do you do without cars?
The factory area in my city has no bike lane, no tramway and only one bus line, for around 10000 workers. Everyone is using its car...
This question sounds weird to someone who only lived in bike and public transport friendly cities.
Any 'factory area' I know has dedicated bike lanes to reach them, is usually connected to the train system and more often than not has busses directly from the city center as well. If there is a bigger car parking it's usually not close to the factory, but next to to a close train station.
Most 'factory areas' around here are not huge tho, but integrated into a smaller village or so. You usually have several eating and shopping options in walking distance. We usually don't build big single use zones anywhere.
You don't realise how badly they are designed until you try to go there without your car. Maybe the train comes only twice in the morning, and twice in the afternoon. Maybe you have 1km of your ride that you must share with trucks on a busy road.
That depends the place. I had to use public transport in an European city every morning for some years, and my bus route had a bus every 5 minutes, making a lot of workers using it massively.
There are similar lines that move people from and to further industrial part of the city looking for the same result: Less cars in the road congesting the circulation, less pollution, less need to parking spot to the people, and less people who don't need a car.
Of course that depends, the place I'm working now has a train station just in front of the building, but I don't take it because there are only 2 train in the morning and 2 in the evening.
My previous employer had a train station in front of the building, and a train every 30min. I didn't take my car.
The problem is very often not a law, but space constraints. Often the city grew around the commercial area and there’s just no space to grow. And even if space is available, it may be costly. So there’s essentially two options: stop growing or move.
The industrial or commercial area not having a bike lane or a tram connection is not a law of nature. Those can (and should) be built when you open a new zone, especially one that has ten thousands of workers. This used to be common and sometimes even financed by the company, for example the Siemensbahn in Berlin - paid for and constructed by Siemens to facilitate worker access to its plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemensbahn
- 10km is a 20min to 40min bicycle ride depending on level. The east side of Dijon being quite flat this is totally not a pita to do, more like a pleasant easy exercise every day.
- A lot of people would run 10km before and/or after work to stay fit which can easily be combined into commuting provided showers are available.
- in a lot of places in this world people are walking that amount to go to work every day, or even to get vital water supplies. The Rarámuri people living in the villages at the bottom of the Barrancas del Cobre (copper canyon) in Mexico aren't strangers to run that amount uphill every morning to go to work.
I did the 15km ride in my city to reach the factory.
I can tell you that it is very stressful to ride a bike on a busy road with no bike lane, filled with trucks driving at 70kmh (because this road is the one that trucks must take as they are not allowed to cross through the city). Then imagine doing it at 7 in the morning in winter, when it is still night and some ice patch.
Even if you make it alive, then comes the issue of shower availability. That's what is blocking me from riding the 35km from my current job: I have no access to a shower at work.
My city has the most extensive bike lane network in France, except for the place where workers are working. If you work in the city center, you are fine and it is pleasant, but then you are part of the lucky workers enjoying the benefits of living in a city.
Well I have been cycling on the roads since I was 12 and I have cycled to work all my career but the last 2 years so I know what a busy road is. It is hard to talk about safety / how stressful riding a bike is because it is totally personal. I am used to traffic in a way I am not hyper anxious on the road while my gf is literally frightened in the traffic and it is not entirely corelated to the actual danger.
For a 35km bike ride (used to do that), you definitely want a shower. For a 10km mostly flat ride? Take it easy and you should be fine just with a short cleanup and possibly t-shirt swap in the bathroom.
I've been known to ride with studded tires in the winter, works really well. It is actually safer to ride a bicycle with studded tires than a car with winter non studded tires on black ice in winter. It means a bit of investment in a dedicated bike/wheelset though. Same for riding in the dark. Blinky 5€ lights won't do but reflective wearables and decent bright front and rear lights can do a lot to increase visibility and safety.
Marking a bike lane or better create a separate bike lane secures people riding bicycle and convince them to take their bike
I grew up a in a village and sometimes took my bike to the next village, not many people did that. 5 years ago they created a separate bike lane. Now, every time I go back to my village I see at least one bike riding it, when before it was non existent.
I live in Amsterdam area (not Amsterdam) and the commute is short and pleasant. For the rent I pay I'd get probably about half of this size in Amsterdam. If anything at all. Also, the problem you described is a chicken/egg issue which requires effort and investment. It can be solved, but not overnight.
But tearing down those dwellings to make space for the factories means the people would have move instead, so don't you end up with much of the same problem ?
I suppose it's more a matter of how the city is structured, whether there are easy transport to the city center vs easy transport to the industrial areas outside the city.
In Germany you have factories in the city and that is great. Many people are living just around the factory, and they benefit from the extensive public transport network that a city provide.
My example is Stuttgart, working for one of the big employer there. They have several factory, an old one in the city, and a newer one in a small town 20km away from the first factory. The old factory benefits from the S bahn and U bahn station and very few people actually needed a car. The new factory has no S bahn, no U bahn, and just one bus line connecting the old factory to the new one. A life without car there is barely possible and all employees there had a car, which then led to a parking space issue (they transformed two adjacent fields into parking).
Looking at map there is plenty of residential near the factory. So really no issue. And the distance is from centre of the city. So rather weird way to think.
I'm not living in Dijon. I speak about zoning law who segregate residential and industrial areas.
But I had a look at Amora factory and the first thing I notice is that there is no bike lane on the road leading to the factory, which is 3km from the village center. Actually there are no bike lane in the town of Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur. And I don't really see public transport around (no train, no tram, no bus stop in front).
This is a typical factory area in France designed to be reached by car only and I'm not fine with it.
Please check in Germany where you have factory in the city! Porsche factory in zuffenhausen, Mercedes factory in unterturckheim, Bosch factory in Feuerbach.
Various other sources have around 150-200k as annual production for a large producing country. That's a lot of mustard, of which Canada is one of several large producers.
Haha it's hilarious :) I could totally be that guy, first thing I thought after reading the BBC article was "eh, maybe I should grow my own mustard" :D
Who cares about Dijon? It's about the mustard. In the supermarkets around here (Germany) it's hard to get Dijon mustard. In 100% of the time it's the Maille brand that can be seen in the header image of the BBC article. However it contains preservatives and I don't see why mustard needs to contain preservatives. By chance I discovered that Löwensenf is the same as Dijon mustard without preservatives, available everywhere and cheap.
And as incredible as it may sound, the "moutarde de Bourgogne" IGP, which wants to be a "quality" label, does not seem to forbid those crap (and as a result looking at random samples, they all have preservatives)
My quick review from mustard here in France is that if you want to avoid those preservatives you should choose an organic (Bio) mustard, which seems to be the only ones without useless ingredients (despite the fact that it probably has nothing to do with being Bio)
As the article states, it's true: nobody in Canada has realized how short things are in France, so I'll be making a lot of people happy buying and re-importing Canadian-grown, France-jarred, dijon back into France when I go next month.
But shhhh, don't tell anyone.
In France, speaking about a mustard shortage (real or synthetic) will immediately result in one, but not over here!
I’m seeing a lot of Dijon mustard content in a very short time frame recently. Business Insider released a YouTube video a few weeks ago, Eater had their own this week, and now this BBC article. That’s at least more than I would expect for a condiment. Anyone know why? Is this just a case of Baader-Meinhof?
Topical news, perhaps? As the article says, french media has been highlighting a perceived shortness in stock of Dijon mustard ... savvy online content creators pick up such trends ...
Definitely not only perceived. There still no sight of mustard in the condiment section of supermarkets around here (leaving mayonnaise and ketchup surrounding empty shelves with a handful of jars of savora). Although i have seen some at organic shops.
If I understand correctly: Grey-Poupon started in Dijon and the Reitzel brothers in Switzerland first imported it. Then they started to make it in Aigle (Vaud), Switzerland, and the French company kind of disappeared. Not sure, but Grey-Poupon is probably still made in Aigle.
I recently moved back to the US after living in France for nearly a decade. I bought some Maille Dijon mustard thinking it would taste the same...boy was I wrong. I was disgusted, it tasted nothing like what I had in France. Would the recipe change per country? I checked the label and it seems that it was fabricated here in the US, so perhaps that has something to do with it?
Every food company changes the recipes for their products depending on the market. It was a big issue a few years ago in Eastern Europe with allegations that western companies are dumping the low quality ingredients to the easterners while keeping the same even higher prices in some cases.
What's worse, the French "Maille" variety of mustard is somewhat mild and boring even in France, and getting mustard that tastes like the 'Amora Fine & Forte' (available in almost every grocery store in France) anywhere in the US is damn near impossible.
You’re probably right, I didn’t realize that it came from Canada until I read more comments in this thread. I just assumed it was made here in the US when I saw the “nutritional facts” label on the back (they don’t do that in France). If you ever get a chance to taste the real thing, try it! Absolutely delicious with steak!
That's just wrong, food products are labelled according to european regulation number 1169/2011.
Moreover, you often find nutri-score labels on the front face: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score
I don't think that's what was meant. US nutrition facts are laid out in an exact format, down to fonts and allowable variations for tall and wide packages, they're instantly recognizable. I suspect this is true in EU countries as well.
Import products are allowed to have a sticker with the information on it, and either the official style isn't required or no one cares. Point being you can tell an imported product which wasn't pre-packaged for the US market, because it won't have what we call the nutrition facts label.
I was referring to the overall [0]format that the USA uses to display the information. Of course, every country has their own version of this. The format I saw on the jar here led me to believe that it was not imported. Nutriscore is pretty new for France.
Americans’ baseline for sweetness is off the charts. I remember a colleague in the US talking about trying natural peanut butter for the first time (ground peanuts, salt and nothing else, as it should be) and complaining about how bitter it was.
Which brand? France has Hellmann's and also tastes very similar to the Hellmann's we have here in the USA. My favorite brand of mayo is Maille, which I have not yet tried here.
I am visiting my parents in France at the moment and can confirm the shortage of plain mustard. Flavored ones are readily available, as are fancier brands like Pommery (generally better known for its Moutarde de Meaux.
The article mentions that this is not true for Dijon mustard. It is named for the recipe and not the region. More critically it lacks an AOS/AOP which is what keeps Champagne in Champagne.
In the article they mention that Dijon mustard made in France is now made in the neighboring subdivision and therefore would violate a hypothetical AOS/AOP.
That's a legitimate point of view. However it's perfectly legal to name any old mustard "Dijon". It's not a protected designation. Most mustard sold as "Dijon" isn't from Dijon.
Food protectionism is so dumb. It’s still champagne, bourbon, balsamic vinegar, bolognese, pecorino romano. You wouldn’t say it’s not a hamburger unless it’s from Hamburg. Or a Philly cheesesteak unless it’s made within city limits.
Yes, the specific taste can be specific to the region’s produce or historic process but that’s true of anything if you’re willing to mythologize it. You shouldn’t be able to claim it made where it isn’t but Dijon mustard meaning “mustard made in the style as popularized in the town of Dijon” is not something you get to claim geographic dominion over long long long after it’s been the genericized accepted term for the specific food. Dijon is a kind of Spicy Mustard but the implication doesn’t go backwards and there’s no other name for it.
> Food protectionism is so dumb. It’s still champagne, bourbon, balsamic vinegar, bolognese, pecorino romano.
I don't agree, when I shed some money on champagne or balsamic vinegar, I want to be sure to have the real deal and not a bland commercial copy surfing on prestigious name. AOP labels ensure that I am getting the real product I'm looking for.
I've been in Russia and tasted their Cognac and Champagne, it's nowhere close the french stuff and they know it. It really taste different.
So get the one with the “made in Champage” stamp. In your defense for having the names be protected you literally called Russian sparking wine (not champagne by your definition) “their champagne.” I can’t possibly make a better case for the terms being generic than that.
it's not protectionism, there's nothing stopping you from making your own hard ewe's milk and selling it. it's just respecting the definition of the name, in much the same way as a trademark
"hoover" might have become a household name, but does that allow anyone to slap a "hoover" name on their vacuum cleaner?
No, respecting the definition of the name is acknowledging that the style of whatever originated and/or was popularized in that pace. The names aren’t brands any more than Yorkshire pudding, Brazilian steak house, or Nashville hot chicken. The difference between these and balsamic is a government that is propping up the regional industry with a bs legal protection that doesn’t benefit customers or clear up any confusion. Nobody thinks that NY strip steak is flown in or their Genoise cake was baked in Genoa.
Those are recipes/styles, not ingredients. And again, it’s not protectionism - it’s not like they’re stopping you from making your own sparkling wine and labeling it “sparkling wine made with the champagne method”. It’s basic consumer protection, I don’t want to have to dig into every product to see if it’s real or fake
So is Champagne, the specific strains of grapes used have changed over the years. And even if it was the ingredients, surely any sparking wine made with those ingredients could be labeled champagne, and they're grown all over. Champagne made in California is as real as anything in France. It's protectionism because they know that champagne is the more recognizable term, and banking on people not knowing that they're alternatives, like dairy producers in the US trying to protect the term "milk" after years of "almond milk", "oat milk" existing in everyday speech. It's entirely manufactured hypothetical consumer confusion.
Specific brands can have all the trademark protection they want. Defining buffalo wings as wings made in Buffalo and only using chickens raised and slaughtered there is silly.
You seem to be under the impression that defining Champagne as coming from Champagne is a recent thing. It's not, it's been like that since the 19th century, even being codified in the Madrid treaty of 1891 - long before anyone was making sparkling wine in the USA .
The fact that the US didn't initially sign these treaties and allowed people to sell fake Champagne to their consumers for so long doesn't really change that
I would like to taste real balsamic vinegar. It's cause for regret that there are two kinds of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena: stuff for cooking, and stuff for sipping, both of which have protected designations. The stuff for cooking is basically fake, containing stuff like caramel, and costs a tenner a bottle. The stuff for sipping costs £200 for a pint, and takes 12 years to make.
I'd like to know where I could buy just a snifter of the stuff, to taste.
I go to Italy every few months and buy a few bottles of generic balsamico for cooking. Cost about 1.20 EUR per 700 mL bottle at Coop. No caramel or funny ingredients. Surely not aged like the expensive stuff but it performs its job well in my kitchen.
Same thing with French fries. I'm actually kinda surprised you say that about Buffalo, I would would have assumed that because of it's insane popularity, low barrier to entry, no real "secret sauce" heh, and the sheer number of iterations that the odds of the best Buffalo wings happening to be in Buffalo was pretty low. Neat.
Clearly you've been reared on American bleach, for which I beg your pardon. French bleach is an entirely different experience, approximate to most US wines. Although more serious cleaning jobs typically demand a good name-brand bleach, Californian cabernets do come close. I wouldn't bother with a chardonnay though, as some of them, while multipurpose, are probably mild enough that they could be safely consumed in error.
Also keep in mind that a good bottle of French bleach comes with a much deeper punt than do the gaudy plastic jugs in America. The oakiness is more pronounced. The bouquet is more authentically floral and the labels aren't in english.
You have exactly articulated the energy of every community that surrounds food on the internet. I’m impressed, disgusted, and so sorry that you too have been exposed to it enough to produce such an accurate parody.
They mean it's a milder-tasting mustard, with less heat, and it doesn't include vinegar, so it has a more balanced flavour, than for example a classic British mustard.
To wit: if your mustard isn't a powder that smells of a chemical agent banned under international treaties on warfare that you need to reconstitute with water before it becomes only mild poison, you haven't experienced the full mustard spectrum.
There's a reason mustard gas is banned. But no clear reason why Colman's isn't.
A story of mustard, a Russian, and a feeble pansy boy:
I once got the bright idea to challenge my friend who often irritated me with his imperviousness to what should be apocalyptic things. I proposed, in a state of misguided confidence, to do a shot of mustard oil. Mustard oil is a generally unknown ingredient in the green imposter most of us recognize as wasabi[1]. It's vicious. Anyway, he accepted the challenge, gulping the shot of mustard oil with a sweet grin of eagerly anticipated schadenfreude. I reluctantly took my own as pledged. The wretched agony that ensued! I writhed and squirmed in an almost hallucinatory pain until I was brought a bushel of fresh basil. Desperate, I chomped every leaf and stem and within minutes was well again, but have not forgotten.
It's still amazing that at no point in modern history we went "actually, why is it legal to call this a thing that it isn't, not even remotely". Imagine if a bunch of companies all sold jars of sticky substance labelled "honey" but with the ingredients list being "high fructose corn syrup, water, natural colouring and flavouring". Truly baffling.
> There's a reason mustard gas is banned. But no clear reason why Colman's isn't.
Sure there is - it's a substance that can't be easily vaporised, aerosolized, or otherwise distributed over a large area, and is consequently wholely ineffective as a large-scale weapon. Whereas mustard gas is only mostly (and sadistically) ineffective[0] as a large-scale weapon, and so makes it into the category of "war crimes that are worth specifically banning, since anyone would ever actually bother commiting them".
English mustard powder doesn't have to be reconstituted; it's very good rubbed into a beef roast. It helps make a nice crust. Mustard powder is also good in salad dressings (mustard is an emulisfier). It makes cheese sauce cheesier (I don't know how that works), so it's great in the topping for Welsh Rabbit.
For these purposes, Dijon doesn't "cut the mustard" (sorry).
I've never liked English mustard paste as a condiment, nor that horrid dark brown stuff referred to as "French mustard", that has never been anywhere near France.
On the other hand, if your reference for mustard intensity is American mustard, then Dijon will come as a shock.
Watching Europeans (incl. Brits) watch Americans put mustard on things is always fun. The eyes go wide, and there's a look of panicked disbelief as you can see them thinking "No, stop, too much!!!"
Same with mustard. And caffeine. Turns out that if you're a human, you can find that limit, have a learning experience, and then stay below it the rest of your life.
To be clear: water poisoning is very, VERY hard compared to mustard, licorice, or caffeine poisoning, because it takes a long time to ingest, and you get plenty of signals from your body that you should stop drinking this much water well before you reach the point where you've severely disrupted homeostasis. Unlike those other three, which you can ingest over a very short period in copious concentrated quantities.
Really? Dijon has a much stronger taste than other mustards I've tried, which I can only describe as bleach. It has sort of the same flavor as wasabi, which can certainly be used to open the nostrils.
The BBC is a British website - most of its readers will be used to traditional British mustards, which are a lot hotter - typical serving implement is a cocaine spoon (not joking.)
Wasabi tastes like horseradish (both are roots), not mustard (a seed.)
> typical serving implement is a cocaine spoon (not joking.)
Haha! It's true - a coke spoon looks just like a mustard spoon, but a bit smaller. Typically they're both silver (or plate).
Fresh horseradish sauce is something that most people haven't encountered; most horseradish sauce comes in jars from supermarkets, and is tame stuff. If you make your own from fresh horseradish, have a glass of cold water to hand. It's in a different part of the Scoville Scale.
I like horseradish flavor quite a bit more than spicy(pepper) flavor, I think because it is spicy but does not linger like the oil based pepper spices.
A stupid story that probably explains more about me than I care to admit. I was making an egg sandwich one day and accidentally grabbed the horseradish sauce instead of mayonnaise, took a bit bite, and thought "hmm... that's funny, my mayonnaise must have gone off." this is where any sane person would stop and verify, but me, being me, went "better make sure" and took another bite. At which point I hunted down the container I used found out I had used horseradish sauce, decided it was actually pretty good and have been using it on my egg sandwiches ever sense.
Honestly there is no accounting for taste. I dislike vinegar and salt chips with a passion, I think it is a vile chemically taste, however I know many people who not only eat them without complaining but appear to prefer the taste and actually spend money to buy the infernal things on purpose. The only lesson I can gain from this is that the world is a large place and there are many types of people in it.
So I've only been using the Maille brand Dijon mustard until recently, and while I did like the flavor profile, it was waaay to strong for me. So I decided to try some other brands, and well, the only thing Dijon mustards appear to have in common is mustard seeds, white wine and Dijon in the name.
I've had a few which were very mild, like Edmond Fallot, and one which was a bit stronger but still mild like Grey Poupon. Especially the Grey Poupon was perfect for this grilled ham I like to have in a sandwich.
Of course, now that I found a new favorite mustard, it's sold out due to the mentioned shortage on mustard seeds...
Before you bring out the pitchforks about this heinous act of culinary imperialism by a soulless British megacorp, check Google Maps: Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur is all of 9 km away from the center of Dijon.
https://goo.gl/maps/f2REE1Tuk53BDGb96