The Christmas Kalends of Provence by Thomas A. Janvier

In the morning of the day preceding Christmas a lurking, yet ill-repressed, excitement pervaded the Chateau and all its dependencies. In the case of the Vidame and Mise Fougueiroun the excitement did not even lurk: it blazed forth so openly that they were as a brace of comets -- bustling violently through our universe and dragging into their erratic wakes, away from normal orbits, the whole planetary system of the household and all the haply intrusive stars.

With my morning coffee came the explanation of a quite impossible smell of frying dough-nuts which had puzzled me on the preceding day: a magnificent golden-brown _fougasso_, so perfect of its kind that any Provencal of that region -- though he had come upon it in the sandy wastes of Sahara -- would have known that its creator was Mise Fougueiroun. To compare the _fougasso_ with our homely dough-nut does it injustice. It is a large flat open-work cake -- a grating wrought in dough -- an inch or so in thickness, either plain or sweetened or salted, fried delicately in the best olive-oil of Aix or Maussane. It is made throughout the winter, but its making at Christmas time is of obligation; and the custom obtains among the women -- though less now than of old -- of sending a _fougasso_ as a Christmas gift to each of their intimates. As this custom had in it something more than a touch of vainglorious emulation, I well can understand why it has fallen into desuetude in the vicinity of Vielmur -- where Mise Fougueiroun's inspired kitchening throws all other cook-work hopelessly into the shade. As I ate the "horns" (as its fragments are called) of my _fougasso_ that morning, dipping them in my coffee according to the prescribed custom, I was satisfied that it deserved its high place in the popular esteem.