On a crêpe, in an ice-cream sundae or straight from the spoon: salted butter caramel (caramel au beurre salé) has become a crêperie classic. Yet it is a recent creation. Here is its Breton story, before we head to the stove.
Why Bretons salt their butter
It all starts with a tax: the gabelle, the royal tax on salt. Under the Ancien Régime, it weighed heavily on a large part of the kingdom. But Brittany, joined to the crown on condition that it kept its privileges, was exempt.
The result: salt was cheap there. On the border between Brittany and Maine, which was subject to the "great gabelle", a minot of salt cost 55 to 60 livres on the Maine side, against 2 to 3 livres on the Breton side. A boon for smugglers, the faux-sauniers.
So in Brittany, people got into the habit of salting their butter generously, not least to keep it longer. The taste stayed, long after the gabelle was abolished in 1790.
Salted or lightly salted butter?
It all comes down to the amount of salt. In France, these names are not set by law but by a code of practice of the dairy industry:
| Butter | Salt content |
|---|---|
| Doux (unsalted) | no added salt |
| Demi-sel (lightly salted) | 0.8 to 3% |
| Salé (salted) | more than 3% |
A small paradox: the caramel that made the recipe famous, like our Spéciale du Faouët, is made with demi-sel butter. Yet everyone still says "salted butter caramel".
1977: the "CBS" from Quiberon
Salted caramels already existed in Brittany in the mid-20th century, but they did not keep well. The man who made them famous was Henri Le Roux. Born in 1942 in Pont-l'Abbé and trained as a chocolatier in Switzerland, he opened his own chocolate shop in Quiberon in 1977.
There, he was looking for a new and simple confection. After three months of trials came his caramel made with lightly salted butter, with crushed walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds. In 1980, it was named best sweet in France at the Salon international de la confiserie in Paris. Henri Le Roux protected the name by registering the CBS trademark, for caramel au beurre salé.
The rest is history: in the late 1990s, Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé paired it with the macaron, and salted caramel went on to conquer ice creams and coffee shops around the world.
Salted butter caramel at Crampous Mad
Don't feel like cooking? Salted butter caramel is all over our menu:
- Spéciale du Faouët (€6.60): the wheat crêpe with lightly salted butter caramel, a safe bet;
- Écureuil (€11.00): crêpe with hazelnut ice cream, salted butter caramel and whipped cream;
- Coupe Crampous (€11.40): two scoops of vanilla, one scoop of salted butter caramel, salted butter caramel cream and whipped cream;
- the salted butter caramel scoop (€3.20), among our creamy ice creams.
And for lovers of plain Breton butter: the sucre au beurre salé crêpe (€4.10), with sugar and lightly salted butter. Our other sundaes, and their stories, are in our article Ice cream and desserts in Mulhouse. And to find out how to say "butter" in Breton, see our little crêperie glossary.
See the full menu or book a table on 03 89 45 79 43, at 14 rue des Tondeurs, right in the centre of Mulhouse. Service all day from Tuesday to Saturday, from 11:30 am.