Limited edition, Confiture Parisienne x Fabien Vallos.

In spring 2026, the workshop under the Viaduc des Arts teamed up with Fabien Vallos. Theorist, translator, historian of art and gastronomy, he has been designing banquets the way one designs a work of art for fifteen years. The occasion: a residency at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, where he is investigating how taste was built in the eighteenth century.

In 1838, in his Treatise on Modern Stimulants, Balzac tried to define modernity through five substances that changed our relationship with time, the world and pleasure: sugar, alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco. A jam was born from that reading. Fabien Vallos composed it the way one defends a thesis, by accumulation and boldness, and named it L'Excitante.

It is red, because May and June are. First the fruit of the season: strawberry, raspberry, cherry, redcurrant. Then three vegetables posing as fruit: tomato, pepper, beetroot. On this crimson base comes a procession of spices long held to be stimulants: saffron, rose water, black lime, Aleppo and Urfa pepper, smoked pimentón, ginger, pepper. Barberry adds tartness, pomegranate molasses and pekmez lengthen the finish, and vanilla calms this lively little crowd.

Let us say it plainly: it is the most expensive jam we have ever cooked, perhaps the most expensive in the world. Twenty-one ingredients, saffron and rose water on equal footing with strawberry, a copper pan and very small batches.

Keeping L'Excitante for breakfast alone would be an offence to good taste. A spoonful on an aged Comté, beside a roast chicken, with a leg of lamb or a duck breast, and jam leaves the toast for the table. It keeps no set hours. It never claimed to.

100 g jar. Seasonal limited edition, June 2026. Also available in a 250 g jar.

Recipe signed by Fabien Vallos, as part of his residency at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.