Division Human factors

The peasants of the Tours region began making rillettes in the Middle Ages. Up until the end of the 18th century, this production was very localised in the rural area around Tours and certain farms in Maine.

At the beginning of the 19th century, local butchers took up this peasant recipe, adapted it using their know-how and handed it down from generation to generation. At this point, the rillettes became known in Touraine as ‘Rillettes de Tours’.

One of the main developments was when good quality pieces of meat began to be used instead of offcuts. The development of new preservation techniques and the fact that the product is cooked with the lid off, giving it a fairly dry texture, was to reduce the fat content and increase the meat content of the rillettes, making them a higher-quality product. This know-how, typical of the city of Tours and the Touraine region, would be developed by local artisan butchers. It was not until 1865 that this dish appeared in certain trade publications.