70 years of experience in top-of-the-range jams making : an incomparable know-how for your jams!

Maison Andrésy celebrates its 70 years of existence in 2022. A whole life ? 3 generations even !
The small family jam factory created in the 1950s has become more professional over the years, with the demands of its customers, chefs and major food brands, harvests and seasons, regulatory constraints, changes in tastes and trends, etc

So obviously, each of our customers, in 2022, benefits from all this experience accumulated during our 70 years of jam making!
What does this really bring to you?
How does it make your relationship with your jam maker more qualitative? And your jams better ?

What benefits do you get from the special know-how resulting from our 70 years of jam making ? 

To call for your jams to a manufacturer of artisanal jam of experience gets you many benefits:

• A guarantee of quality and security of our sourcing of ingredients: in addition to the gustatory quality of our fruits, we developed during our experience a demanding reference frame of criteria of selection of our ingredients. We verify and secure: the seriousness of our partners, arboriculturists and producers by regular and documented visits, the traceability of our ingredients from producer to consumer, the respect of our taste requirements by a series of tests carried out by our teams at each new harvest
• Incomparable expertise on the preparation of each fruit: we know whether to use the fruit whole or cut, whether it should have a particular preparation, how to prepare recipes with fruit mixtures, how much aromatics or spices to integrate depending on whether they strengthen or weaken over time and much more! Contact our experts to learn more!
• The mastery of each step of the recipes of our artisanal jams: we do not make anything by chance, because we asked ourselves all the possible questions during these 70 years: Should we macerate the fruits with the sugar before cooking? Should we cook them directly? What quantities do we use to obtain the best possible taste for your demanding customers? Should pectin or lemon juice be added, and to which fruit?
• An experienced R&D department: in 70 years, we have produced more than 1,000 custom recipes; researched and tested all varieties of fruit in jams; established taste and quality controls; worked to obtain firm or soft textures or sought out acidic or fruity flavors, rare fruits, light or gourmet recipes…
• A quality department which represents 10% of our staff: to guarantee you that each person who intervenes on the artisanal manufacture of your jams does it in the respect of your requirements of quality, in food safety, supported by permanent and relevant controls
• The knowledge of each jam legislation and of the requirements of labels and certifications: custom-made, organic and made in France…
• A unique expertise in the world of custom-made jams: we allow you to give free rein to your creativity. At Maison Andrésy, you can choose to personalize your jam range to the extreme! We know how to source for you the terroir and the variety of your fruits, we adapt your recipe typicity or the flexibility of each texture, we even work on the certification of your products, and we know how to supply and manage your jar format, the color of your cap or your labels.

And above all, we are proud to use our 70 years of experience for the made in France in all its aspects and we defend it as a commitment linked to our DNA, unavoidable!

Since 1952, we have learned to :

• Sourcing orchards all over France, to obtain 70% of our fruit from French soils: apricots from Roussillon, strawberries from Dordogne, mirabelle plums from Lorraine, cherries from Alsace, rhubarb from Nord Pas de Calais, clementines and oranges from Corsica or even blackcurrants from Ile de France!
• Favouring the tools and gestures of the French gastronomic tradition in our workshops: maintaining copper basins, using ladles to skim after cooking or mixing before putting in jars…
• Recruiting and training in our region: did you know that at Maison Andrésy, sometimes you find your mother, your daughter and your aunt in the same department? And that our 52 year old dock manager started working for us as a teenager, just like his mother before him?

What is the most important service born from our 70 years of experience in jam making? Learn more about Maison Andrésy’s R&D department! 

Why create a team in charge of Research & Development in a traditional jam factory?
What advantages and benefits does this bring to your jams?

In order for you to benefit today from all that we have learned through experience since 1952, we had to perpetuate all our knowledge!
We have created an R&D department within our artisanal jam factory to guarantee that :

• Each fruit harvest will be validated, each year, by taste tests or maturity measurements, upon arrival in our workshop
• Each artisanal production of jam meets our demanding taste criteria
• All the people who take part in the production are properly trained and know how to judge the quality of a jam

Hence, we will be able to answer 100% of your requests for recipe innovations, or for fruit variety eyebrows.
We will succeed in validating all the labels necessary to demonstrate the quality of our jams or to meet your needs: organic certification, kosher validation of the recipes, guaranteed French origin…

What job was born from 70 years of experience in cooking artisanal French jams? Being a buyer at Maison Andrésy ! 

For 70 years, Maison Andrésy has been buying fruits and ingredients for your jams. On what criteria do we validate – or not – a fruit, a producer, a country of origin?

In 1952, when we started our adventure as a manufacturer of artisanal jams, we only cooked fruit from the orchards of our region. The main objective was to preserve the fruits not consumed after the harvest. Thus the families could taste these fruits in jams all the year!

In 1975, Gérard Cassan, the son-in-law of the founder of our jam factory, opened the horizon of the origins of our fruits. He visits all our customers in France and at the same time visits passionate fruit growers and producers.
He will initiate long partnerships with quality producers all over France, and sometimes even in neighboring countries – some of which still last!

Over the last ten years, trust and know-how are no longer enough. It is necessary to prove sound cultivation practices, to attest that the food safety of the consumer is guaranteed, to justify documents of origin and analyses…
Sourcing good fruit, yes! And also prove the relevance of the sourcing!

Moreover, to transmit a knowledge so long acquired through various experiences, over 3 generations, it was necessary to mobilize a person with a strong responsibility: to write and explain all that experience has taught us in the selection of fruits!

It is Julia Cassan, Gérard’s youngest daughter, who has taken over and professionalized this role within Maison Andrésy.
What missions have we given to our purchasing manager?

• To establish a charter that defines our quality requirements and also our commitments in terms of cultivation methods, respect for the environment and the people who work there
• To establish organoleptic quality criteria for each of our fruits: no good dish without good ingredients!
• To map the soils, varieties and practices of cultures adapted to the cooking of fruits in jams and their fragility in front of the emergent climatic hazards
• Guarantee traceability and food safety “from the field to the platte” through specifications and supporting documents to collect

In short: “Sourcing the best of Nature” is what the purchasing department at Maison Andrésy brings you for your artisanal jams!

70 years of jam making, it’s also small anecdotal experiences… Small stories of jams told by the R&D department and the cooking!

In the R&D department, what was your most difficult jam recipe to develop?

Julia Cassan, manager at Maison Andrésy and head of the R&D department for 8 years:
“Tea jellies without a doubt!

They are not strictly speaking jams because we don’t use fruits for cooking but dried and flavored tea leaves.

When two of the most prestigious French tea brands came to us and asked us to make jellies with their emblematic recipes, we immediately accepted the challenge! At the time, this did not exist at all.

It turned out that tea was a very demanding ingredient and tea jelly was one of the most difficult recipes to make.

We have to guarantee our customers the same quality with each production, even if we produce for them more than a dozen times a year!

To achieve this reliability, we had to mobilize all our expertise:

• R&D to master the natural chemistry of tea leaves with sugar and pectin, and thus obtain a soft and pleasant gel in the mouth
• Production, for a reactive and qualitative bottling, respecting the soft gel obtained
• Quality, for the follow-up of each step and the training of each person involved in the very particular process required by the tea leaves
• And above all, the great experience of our cuers: because sometimes experience teaches us more than theoretical knowledge about good practices!

Today it has become easier, we mastered this technique! And it is especially a great pride for all the people who have worked on this application.

In our own range today we have 3 tea specialties, all delicious and fragrant:

• a jelly based on vanilla rooibos
• a jelly from green tea
• and a very delicate jelly made from white tea infusion

Of course, we have used this unique learning process to answer other requests from our customers, similar in technique, with very varied basic ingredients. For example we have made :

• a vanilla jelly
• aromatic jellies, with or without leaves
• and of course all the fruit, fruit and spice jellies

These requests for recipes are always a challenge that motivates us to learn and discover, or to apply what we have learned. We love it!”

Tell us about the most original French jam recipe you have cooked in the past 70 years?

Brigitte, cook at Maison Andrésy for 20 years:
“It’s not one but a whole range of events that has marked me: recipes combining 2 very different culinary cultures. A real challenge, both in creation and in cooking!

I remember that it was at the request of a world-renowned Parisian delicatessen, for the anniversary of its partnership with Japan: tailor-made recipes to combine ingredients from each country.

R&D did all the creative research and sourcing work, and then we, the preparers and cooks, were trained to make them. There were 3 recipes, all delicious and mixing one ingredient from each country, France and Japan:

• Strawberries from the Drôme with Japanese yuzu juice
• Montmorency cherries with Sakura cherry petals
• Reinette apples from Normandy with Matcha tea

Delicious recipes, with incredible colors! We had some fun and unusual adventures in front of the basins! Like when we had to delicately unwrap a few hundred little bags of Sakura cherry blossoms! And I’m not talking about the fine matcha powder that had to be delicately mixed with the kidney apples!”

You too, challenge our R&D teams to create new recipes by contacting our experts!
Contact your experts