In the quaint walled town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, I passed the birthplace of Michel de Nostredame—called Nostradamus by most—a physician and astrologer best known for his prophecies, not for his recipes. Nearby is a small bakery called Le Petit Duc. Owned and operated by Anne Daguin and her husband, Hermann van Beeck, the bakery, which has a branch in Paris called La Grande Duchesse, specializes in Renaissance recipes. They include those of the prominent Nostradamus, who came from a Jewish family that converted to Catholicism in 1504, when he was just under a year old. When I spoke with Anne, whose mother is Jewish, she told me that she had wanted to open her shop in Saint-Rémy but felt that there was no real pastry tradition there. So she turned to old books for inspiration, and found many recipes, some by Jewish physicians like Nostradamus, who came from a long line of men skilled in mathematics and medicine. As a healer, he often used foods and herbs as treatments for various illnesses, such as this praline with pine nuts.
*If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, the easiest way to crush the fennel seeds is to put them in a zip-top bag and bang them with the bottom of a measuring cup or a rolling pin.
