Skip to content
La Pincée

Our sources

This page lists the editorial, scientific, professional, and documentary sources behind what we write. The point is simple: every claim on the site should be checkable — by you, and by the search engines and AI assistants that decide whether we're worth citing.

1. How I document

Let's be honest about the method: at this stage, La Pincée is systematic desk research, not field reporting. Concretely, every page rests on:

  • The official appellation registers — the EU eAmbrosia database (PDO/PGI), the INAO specifications for French appellations, the gov.uk registers for UK protections, and OAPI for African geographical indications (Penja pepper). That's where I check that an appellation exists, since when, and what its specification actually requires.
  • Peer-reviewed publications and institutional reports — the scientific literature on product chemistry and authentication, JRC (the European Commission's Joint Research Centre) reports, and Europol/Interpol Opson operations on food fraud.
  • The producers' own documentation, always cross-checked against the registers and independent sources — never taken at face value.
  • Tasting the products themselves, bought at retail price, under the protocol published on the methodology page.

Field visits to producers are part of the project's intentions; when they happen, they will be documented publicly on the site, with dates and notes. Until then, no page claims first-hand, on-site observation.

2. Practitioners whose published work I rely on

I claim no private interviews with these figures: it's their published work that serves as reference, and that I cite — chefs who have written on rare peppers and spice blends, authors specializing in spices, pastry chefs published on vanilla and tonka, and the International Olive Council's published standards for oil evaluation. Experts cited beyond this standing list are named at each occurrence in the article concerned, with the published source.

3. Scientific and institutional sources

For anything touching chemical composition, nutrition, or food safety, we lean on:

  • INRAE (French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment) — work on olive-oil polyphenols, honey composition, and the aromatic compounds in peppers.
  • ANSES (French food-safety agency) — guidance on recommended sodium intake, contaminants in spices (pesticides, heavy metals), and allergens.
  • CIRAD — research on the cultivation of pepper, vanilla, and saffron.
  • EU and national origin-certification bodies — the published specifications behind the PDO/PGI products we cite (Guérande fleur de sel, Provence olive oil, Banyuls vinegar, Quercy saffron, and others), confirmed against the official registers rather than the seller's claim.
  • USDA Foreign Agricultural Service and equivalent trade reports — for international production volumes.
  • The International Olive Council (IOC) — for olive-oil grading and tasting standards.

When a claim rests on one of these, we cite it on the page. When we can't source a claim, we say so.

4. Reference books

Our working shelf includes, among others:

  • Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, Scribner, revised ed. 2004 — the foundational reference on food chemistry.
  • Niki Segnit, The Flavour Thesaurus, Bloomsbury, 2010 — for building pairings.
  • Vincent Marotta, Le Grand Livre des Épices, Lattès, 2019.
  • Olivier Roellinger, Épices: le guide des grands voyageurs du goût, Éditions du Rouergue, 2018.
  • The Larousse des épices, Larousse, 2014.

Any article that draws on one of these cites it explicitly in a note.

5. Trade publications and magazines

We read regularly and cite on occasion: The Art of Eating (Edward Behr), Olive Oil Times, Lucky Peach (2011–2017 archives), Saveur, and the French professional monthlies Le Chef and Thuriès Gastronomie.

6. Commercial sources and databases

For pricing, availability, and distribution: the public catalogues of the merchants we cite (Amazon US/UK, Sous Chef, Burlap & Barrel, Diaspora Co, Spicewalla, Jacobsen Salt, Steenbergs, and others); Open Food Facts for label comparisons; and barcode/traceability databases for distributor-level checks.

7. Audiovisual sources

For visual documentation and cultural context: documentaries on the spice trade, Chef's Table (for contemporary use by named chefs), and the Townsends channel for the historical use of spices in European cooking.

8. The limits of our sourcing

Three limits, declared up front. Information on producers rests on desk research — official registers, publications, and producer documentation cross-checked against them — not on field visits or direct interviews; no page claims on-site observation. Some historical material rests on secondary syntheses; we keep documented fact and reasonable hypothesis clearly separate. And detailed chemical analyses (chromatography, precise aromatic profiles) come from the published scientific literature, not from in-house lab work — we don't run our own instrumental analysis.

9. How to flag an error or a missing source

Any factual error, wrong citation, missing source, or arguable interpretation can be sent to us via Contact. Corrections are made within eight working days and the page is updated with a visible change log. Our commitment: we never erase an error without documenting it. Every correction leaves a trace you can read.