1Candied fruit and fruit jellies are Middle Eastern in origin and spread to Europe around the 12th century.
2This region of France has been producing them since the 15th century.
3When wars blocked access to cane sugar,
4fruit farmers began planting sugar beets to preserve this confectionery tradition.
5This company in France has been catering to people's sweet tooth since 1880
6with its gift boxes containing traditional candied fruit and fruit jellies.
7To make candied fruit, a master confectioner boils fresh fruit for many hours to soften the fibers.
8This process will later help sugar to penetrate the fruit.
9He pokes the fruit to see if it's ready.
10Boiling time varies from one hour for apricots to eight hours for chestnuts.
11Citrus fruits are sliced before boiling.
12After boiling, the more fragile types of fruit, such as apricots, pears, and clementines,
13go into large hot-air dehydrators for up to three weeks.
14Every day, the master confectioner replaces the evaporated water with sugar syrup,
15which concentrates over time.
16For less fragile fruits, the technique is different.
17Workers heat them in vats of sugar syrup for about 10 days.
18The moisture evaporates, and the syrup concentrates.
19The factory sells whole candied fruits like this collection of clementines, apricots, pears, figs, and plums to gourmet food shops,
20which sell them by the piece or in elegant, private-label gift boxes.
21Whole candied fruit are also popular for designing edible arrangements.
22Making fruit jellies is a different process.
23The recipe combines fruit pulp, making up more than 50% of the mixture, with powdered sugar,
24liquid glucose (a form of plant sugar),
25pectin to make the mix gelatinous,
26and natural fruit flavoring.
27A worker boils down the mix for a half-hour to concentrate the sugar,
28then adds more fruit flavoring.
29As the mix continues to cook, she draws samples to measure the sugar content.
30She does this until the mix hits its target concentration of 78%.
31Another worker pours the batch from the pot into a large pitcher,
32then into a square stainless-steel mold.
33It takes the jelly a day to set.
34Once set, a worker removes it from the mold (this one's a different flavor)
35and coats it with crystallized sugar to preserve it.
36The worker then lays the jelly square on a cutter the company calls a guitar
37because its steel wires look like guitar strings.
38The wires cut once in each direction to make cubes.
39Then, another worker applies a second coating of sugar.
40In addition to this small-batch production, the factory has one automated machine,
41which makes fruit jellies in a variety of geometric or fruit shapes created by templates made of plaster.
42This process is much faster than the handmade approach.
43First, the machine makes a bed of starch.
44Then it presses the plaster form into the bed to create mold cavities.
45The next station fills the cavities with hot liquid fruit jelly.
46Then, the molds are set aside for a day.
47The starch absorbs the residual moisture as the jelly sets.
48The next day, workers load the molds on top of the same machine,
49which flips them to dump out the jellies.
50The jellies tumble down a vibrating conveyor belt.
51The starch shakes off with each bounce.
52Then they pass under a spinning brush, which removes any remaining starch.
53The conveyor moves them into a rotating drum, which showers them with sugar.
54On the packaging line, a slow conveyor belt moves retail boxes in front of a row of workers.
55Each worker is responsible for a single flavor.
56While placing the required number of fruit jellies in the box,
57she also performs a quality control check,
58removing and replacing any that are misshapen.
59This ensures that these traditional fruit jellies look as good as they taste.