In Bar-le-Duc, Anne Dutriez perpetuates the royal secret of redcurrant jam

Tucked away in a discreet neighborhood, away from the 240-meter-high upper town, nestles Maison Dutriez, the sole producer of a treasure you must taste at least once in your life: seeded redcurrant jam with quill, nicknamed Bar caviar.

Philippe Toinard Published on 11/7/25 at 10:22 AM

In 1559, Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots and wife of Francis II, is said to have compared this jam to a ray of sunshine in a jar. Kings, queens, dukes, counts, troop commanders and governors passing through the Duchy of Bar delighted in it, while centuries later, Alfred Hitchcock would only stay in hotels that served it for breakfast. It was the golden age of this jam, sold worldwide in tens of thousands of jars. In 1974, Jacques Dutriez bought the À la Lorraine company, and with it the recipe. A few years later, Yves, his son, took over, followed by Anne, his granddaughter, who gave up her management studies to perpetuate a unique know-how whose origins date back to the 14th century.

Anne Dutriez's self-sacrifice

It takes courage to preserve at arm's length a historic production of no more than 6,000 jars a year, which can only be sold if two essential conditions are met. The first is a sufficient quantity of fruit - the famous red or white currants - supplied locally by private individuals who harvest the fruit bunch by bunch (at least 500 kilos of currants are needed to potentially fill 5,000 jars). The overall weight may indeed seem ridiculous, but migratory birds fly over the Meuse to feast on the fruit before harvesting. If they set their sights on the cherry trees, production will be assured; if they set their sights on the redcurrants, the year will be more complicated.

The second is that Anne Dutriez has a skilled workforce at her disposal, the famous seed removers, who delicately remove the seven seeds contained in each berry on average. This art requires patience and know-how that are difficult to describe. Those who practice it have learned the gesture from their mothers, grandmothers or aunts, and the best of them can seed 4 to 5 kilos of redcurrants a day, while a beginner can barely manage a kilo. But why use a quill when there are other tools like knives and chisels? The knife is banned because its blade oxidizes the fruit. The chisel, too, because its blade is too thick and shatters the grain. All that's left is a beveled quill. Soaked in cold water to keep it tender, wedged between the index and middle fingers, the tip of the feather is used to incise each berry at stalk level, before gently pressing into the flesh.with a stroke of surgical precision, it is necessary to remove the seeds without damaging the kernel, which must remain whole.

michel Petit

Ancestral recipe

within hours, the seeds are delivered to Anne Dutriez's factory, where they are poured whole into century-old basins filled with boiling sugar syrup. This is where the secret comes in. For some, it's a trick of the hand that has been passed down for centuries, for others it's mastery of the boiling process that follows the immersion of the grains in the syrup. The mystery remains, and so much the better. A few minutes later, a layer of foam appears on the surface, which Anne hastily removes with the rounded back of a spoon. You have to skim for a long time, squeezing each grain gently without crushing it, to bring out the foam that seeps through the notch made by the feather quill.the last seeds that may have escaped the de-seeders must be removed. Then comes the rest stage, a whole night to allow the jam to solidify. Early in the morning, after a final skimming, Anne fills the jars, sterilizes and labels them. Some of the jars are stored in the store, while others are sent to retailers in France and abroad.

100 grams of pleasure

Red, white or, more rarely, pink, redcurrant jam is a delicacy that can be enjoyed in two spoonfuls. Just think, 100 grams when most traditional jam jars weigh three times as much. But this Barisien treasure is a traditional art of craftsmanship. Each bean bursts open under the palate, releasing the words to tell this timeless story. To defend and appreciate this piece of our heritage is also to support a woman in her forties who has been striving since she was 20 years old to preserve a six-century-old know-how that could have disappeared. She could be content to make classic redcurrant jam full of seeds, but between a seed stuck between two teeth after breakfast and a sweetness that envelops the taste buds for the day, she has chosen her camp.