Chocolat Voisin

Léon Voisin opened his first shop in Lyon in 1897, building a business around imported cocoa and coffee at a time when both were still specialty goods for French consumers. The company expanded quickly, opening roughly ten shops across Lyon within its first five decades, and by 1915 employed around 25 master chocolate makers and roasters working out of a workshop on rue de Bonnel. The product now most associated with the house, the Coussin de Lyon, was not part of the original 1897 offering — it was created considerably later, in 1960, by Voisin's chocolatiers. The confection takes its name and shape from a local tradition dating to 1643, when the city's aldermen, seeking protection from the plague, placed a ceremonial wax candle and a gold shield resting on a silk cushion at the Fourvière basilica in honor of the Virgin Mary. Voisin's chocolatiers translated that cushion into a small square pillow of chocolate ganache flavored with curaçao or kirsch and almond praline, coated in a thin chocolate shell. The Coussin de Lyon remains Voisin's best-known product and one of the city's recognized culinary specialties, sold through the company's Lyon boutiques and gourmet retailers.