[HN Gopher] Post office in France rolls out croissant-scented stamp
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Post office in France rolls out croissant-scented stamp
Author : ohjeez
Score : 173 points
Date : 2025-10-09 15:40 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctvnews.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctvnews.ca)
| n1b0m wrote:
| Do they taste buttery when you lick them?
| westpfelia wrote:
| I maintain that croissant's are just sticks of butter someone
| accidentally spilled flour on.
| af78 wrote:
| That's how I would define kouign-amann.
| edwcross wrote:
| Croissants are sugar-free kouign-amanns, then?
| wvbdmp wrote:
| Unfortunately, WebSmell-o-Vision has not yet been unilaterally
| pushed by the dudes at Google to do this news justice, but as a
| croissant connaisseur I would have at least appreciated a webp of
| the thing instead of some random archive image. It's a stamp, for
| christ's sake.
|
| There is a pic here and it's quite nice imo: https://www.wopa-
| plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pid=105515
| bogzz wrote:
| I'm holding out for a <smell> HTML tag.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| <bouquet>
| ben_w wrote:
| Which any English person over 40 will spell <bucket> for
| reasons that likely make no sense to anyone outside the
| country.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
| _kb wrote:
| And of course the `olfactoryFactory` component for
| Enterprise(tm) frameworks.
| layer8 wrote:
| function olfactory() { return
| document.createElement("ol"); }
| classified wrote:
| I bet the next version of Chrome will have that.
| ghssds wrote:
| I can't wait for nasa.gov to let everybody smell Uranus.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Have a chat with your dog
| usr1106 wrote:
| But wopa-plus does even mention the essential detail?
|
| https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-croissant-au-beurre
| xattt wrote:
| Here I was misreading the article that it was croissant-shaped,
| not scented, until I saw a picture.
| carbocation wrote:
| Friendly counterpoint (I know, not actually responsive to your
| comment, but tangentially related):
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4401
| tempodox wrote:
| I can almost smell breakfast...
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, we also need a cappuccino smell stamp.
| squigz wrote:
| Has there ever been any sort of even-remotely-successful smell-
| o-vision? We can recreate input for many of our other senses -
| music, visuals, touch - so why not smell?
| nativeit wrote:
| Presumably the volatility inherent to "volatile chemicals"
| makes it challenging to reproduce on-demand. I'd imagine
| you'd need something like dozens of base compounds, alcohols
| and acids to create esters and carrier media, some way of
| protecting all of it from oxygen, a hyper-accurate mixing
| device that can then by hyper-cleaned between each scent,
| since our noses would be too sensitive to allow even a small
| amount of cross-contamination...and then, why stop at smell?
| You basically already have everything you need for taste as
| well. Insert some lab-grown tissues and/or fibers, and we've
| invented the Star Trek replicator!
| amelius wrote:
| It's kinda odd that the first sense that evolution gave us will
| be the last we can record/playback using our devices.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Try and find a good one in France. Harder than you'd think
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Try and find a good one in France. Harder than you'd think_
|
| In Paris? Sure. You're competing with tourists. Almost _any_
| rural bakery? No. You 'd have to try to find something shitty.
| jjgreen wrote:
| In Paris, look for the little old ladies carrying half-
| baguettes and go in the direction they're coming from.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| You also want to know when they're fresh. Good bread,
| particularly in the unseasoned French style, stales
| _rapidly_ once cool.
| jraph wrote:
| Yeah, buy one baguette once for the folklore, and then
| buy good (whole, optionally levain-based) organic bread
| that lasts days.
| williamdclt wrote:
| Like many people, I like baguette and I don't like whole
| bread (especially levain-based). Baguettes aren't for
| show/tourism, it's a staple of french food. It does mean
| you want to buy it on the day, which is fine for many
| people.
| jraph wrote:
| > Baguettes aren't for show/tourism, it's a staple of
| french food
|
| Indeed. So much so it's often a pain to find good whole
| bread outside cities.
|
| I was being a bit facetious.
|
| More seriously, the issue with baguette / white bread,
| aside from drying very fast, is that it's rapid-
| absorption carbohydrates that are not very healthy and
| not very filling. Add jam and you have it all. Taking
| white bread for breakfast every day is not a very good
| habit. It increases the risk of having a crash in the
| middle of the morning and of making you nibble.
|
| For this reason, it's a shame it's so spread. Bread used
| to be whole in France in the past. White bread and
| baguette appeared in France only at the end of 19th /
| beginning of the 20th century apparently. So, it's been a
| French staple, but only quite recently.
|
| Of course I won't argue with taste. Especially that I
| understand both "sides" here. I used to prefer baguette /
| white bread and now I largely prefer whole bread (and
| like anything whole, you should buy it organic; if you
| don't, white bread might still be the lesser evil). It
| took some time to get used to whole bread. I still like
| the taste and the texture of white bread very much, but I
| don't like the consequences.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| it's a bit harder, but if you find a local walking out of
| their home, and pass 6 or 7 boulangeries until going into
| one, you're probably at a good one (or at risk of a
| stalking accusation)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not my experience with bakeries in rural France, which I have
| more experience with than Paris. I've spent much more time
| trying these things in rural France than in Paris. I can say
| that Nice was good though
|
| It's much easier to find better bread and cakes in Germany
| even in cities
|
| In France, most of it is quite poor quality, rural or city
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I would actually disagree. A typical characteristic about
| "food in the place it's famously from" is that the _median_
| level of quality is quite high, and particularly in the case
| of anything involving bread - that it's fresh. The case of
| pizza in NYC is the same. There are certainly places selling
| shit pizza and shit croissants to tourists, but even in a
| fairly popular tourist hotspot it will likely be very freshly
| made and of surprisingly good quality. Even the bottom of the
| barrel (a $1.50 pizza near Times Square or Paris train-
| station chain boulangerie) is above the best thing you can
| get in countless countries around the world. Don't get me
| wrong, I'll happily go in search of The Best of whatever, but
| if just pick a place at random, it probably will be
| surprisingly good.
|
| Legally, to even call yourself a boulangerie in France you
| must bake your goods on site, make the dough from scratch,
| ferment yourself, shape everything yourself... that alone
| guarantees a certain floor of quality: https://www.legifrance
| .gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... There are in fact
| quite strict laws about boulangeries in France... since a law
| in 1790 they are not even allowed to pick their own vacation
| days!
| sofixa wrote:
| > The case of pizza in NYC is the same
|
| That's more a question of taste, IMO. I found most pizza in
| the US to be way too greasy and sugary and salty for my
| taste; but that's what the local tastes expect.
| williamdclt wrote:
| Not really true. Most locals in most places will have
| opinions about the bakery you should go to and which one you
| should avoid, even if that means going to the next village
| over. Even if that means having to schedule because the good
| bakery is only open twice a week.
|
| In my experience, the "bad" bakeries are on par with the
| average bakery in the rest of Europe (at least in countries
| that do not have a strong bakery culture): they're _fine_,
| but "fine" isn't really good enough for a such staple of food
| and culture. Of course, some bakeries are particularly bad
| and much worse than "fine".
| GLdRH wrote:
| Can't wait for the cheeses
| Scoundreller wrote:
| not before the RATP series!
| jraph wrote:
| La Poste might have invented the first non-vegan stamps in
| history.
|
| I hope they don't turn rancid.
| hansvm wrote:
| Given the normal process for making glue I wouldn't be so
| certain.
| tux3 wrote:
| Most modern glues are synthetic. Super glue is usually
| cyanoacrylate, regular glue sticks might be Polyvinyl Acetate
| (PVA). Outside of specialty glues that are intentionally
| going for old school methods, it's not really a thing anymore
| hammock wrote:
| How recently were stamps with glue invented?
| mminer237 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_gum
|
| Apparently 1837, and the original adhesive was made from
| potato starch and gum arabic.
| hansvm wrote:
| IIRC, envelopes still use adhesives derived from gelatin.
| Maybe stamps have modernized at some point?
| LtdJorge wrote:
| There's also PVA used there
| ch-one wrote:
| Nice, we got 4 fruits in Switzerland:
| https://shop.post.ch/en/stamps-philately/philately/single-st...
| derelicta wrote:
| I miss my concrete stamps... A bit rough on the tongue but
| still lovely
| mihaaly wrote:
| I am holding off for the red wine flavoured one.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| Now _this_ is the future I've been waiting for
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I wish we had croussants here in teh states (tiny speciality
| shops not withstanding). They are a rare. instead we get a weird
| butter flavored croissant shaped bread with nothing of the
| texture or aroma of the real thing.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Because most in North America are made with margarine or a mix
| of margarine and butter, so much of the butter "taste" is fake.
| That's also why the lamination is worse.
| esperent wrote:
| It's not just the states, pretty much all of Europe and even in
| France you'll find cheap croissants made with margarine. You
| always need to go to a real small bakery (tiny specialty shop
| as you say) to find real, freshly baked croissants. That's just
| a bit easier in France. The problem isn't where you live, it's
| where you shop.
| righthand wrote:
| This is correct, croissants are best the closer they are to
| the time they were pulled from the oven. A specialty bakery
| will have croissants made that day. Sometimes cafes will
| carry a local bakers goods, just ask.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's not just about that, though. Some places make awful
| croissant-shaped things, for example just next door in
| Spain. You can get better croissants from Tesco Express in
| the UK, and I doubt they are made with butter.
| righthand wrote:
| Right that's why you would ask.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Most bakeries offer the two types though: "au beurre" and
| "sans beurre". The later don't necessarily needs to be made
| with cheap margarine, a good vegetal oil (or a combinaison)
| suits very well. The flavor is different and I prefer those
| than the butter ones. Freshness is a must obviously as peer
| said.
| esperent wrote:
| You're right, and I was simplifying. The problem isn't
| margarine per se, it's _cheap_ margarine. Which is what you
| 'll find in nearly all supermarket croissants. Even the
| ones advertising "all butter" in a supermarket will be
| using the shittiest butter that they're still legally
| allowed to call butter. Depends on the country but often
| has additives like food coloring and artificial butter
| flavor.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's not just the states, pretty much all of Europe
|
| Everywhere you go pastries are not even 10% as good as in
| France. You can pick anything in a semi decent french bakery
| and it'll be miles ahead of the best pastries you'll find in
| most places
|
| That's one of the greatest mystery of life to me, all they
| have to do is copy super simple hundred years old recipes.
| Why don't they make flans ? eclairs ? croissants ? madeleines
| ? sables ? Everyone else seems dead set on baking the
| sweetest or greasiest things
| GlobalFrog wrote:
| Here is a recipe taught to students in bakung and pastries
| : it takes quite a lot of time to make them properly, hence
| the cost-cutting measures of a lot of shops !
| https://encoreungateau.com/croissants-cap-patissier-
| recette/
| lazide wrote:
| The steps required to make proper pastries are anything but
| simple, and the ingredients are not particularly cheap
| (anymore!) either.
|
| What makes a croissant a croissant is hundreds of layers of
| properly layered dough, with the right amount of butter
| between layers, for instance.
| sofixa wrote:
| > even in France you'll find cheap croissants made with
| margarine
|
| Rare. Most bakeries in France serve their local community,
| and they won't get repeat business if their croissants are
| shit. There is actually a standard and you can't call
| yourself a bakery (boulangerie) unless you make your stuff
| from scratch onsite.
|
| https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT0000.
| ..
| GuB-42 wrote:
| And even then, beware of scams, even in France. "Real small
| bakeries" is not a guarantee. Simple "croissants" don't have
| to use butter, and they often don't. "Croissants au beurre"
| have butter in it, but it may be only a small quantity, the
| rest being a mix of vegetable fats. They are usually better
| than the ones with margarine, but you still don't have the
| real thing. You need to make sure to get "croissants pur
| beurre", or even better "croissants pur beurre AOP".
|
| Many bakeries have both, the "pur beurre" are more expensive,
| obviously.
|
| When you look at the raw ingredient price, it makes a lot of
| sense that they want to use alternatives to butter. Margarine
| is about 4EUR/kg, fake butter 8EUR/kg, real butter 12EUR/kg,
| there is about 25g of it in a croissant. Considering that a
| croissant is about 1EUR (outside of big cities / tourist
| places), that's a significant fraction of the cost.
|
| Also, most bakeries in France don't make their own
| croissants, pur beurre or not. Even for those that make their
| own bread. It is quite a complicated process and most
| bakeries just buy them frozen from a factory and only do the
| baking. Now, it doesn't mean they are bad, I prefer it when
| croissants are fully made on site, but I can make do with
| industrial dough, "pur beurre" however is non negotiable.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Costco will sell you an implausibly large number of croissants.
| They're pretty good if you eat them the same day. They go bad
| very rapidly, which makes sense given that the minimum purchase
| size is something like 24.
|
| They're still better than Costco's "bagels", which do not share
| any properties of bagels other than the toroidal shape.
| jdpage wrote:
| I'm not a croissant expert, but I do like the Costco ones. I
| just need to convince 2-3 friends to split them with me, and
| then eat multiple per day, in order for them to make sense as
| a purchase.
| julian_t wrote:
| Same with bagels here in the UK. Round bread with a hole in it,
| for the most part.
| wiether wrote:
| > I wish we had croussants
|
| That's funny because the typo you made at "croissants" make it
| sound exactly like this guy says it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScSp4mGIrdE
| bvan wrote:
| La Frenchtech at its peak.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| How are they going to discourage roaches from eating your mail?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Has science gone too far?
| genter wrote:
| Better than the time that a utility company mailed out a gas-
| scented flyer to teach people what a gas leak smelled like. 911
| was inundated with gas leak calls.
|
| (Search is so fucking useless these days that I can't find
| anything about it, but pretty sure it was in New York.)
| eichin wrote:
| I remember a scratch-and-sniff version, rather than just
| scented (in western CT, in the 1970s - they must have bulk sent
| them, noone in the neighborhood actually _had_ gas service so
| it wasn 't in with gas bills.) That's enough to find
| https://hackaday.com/2024/12/03/scratch-and-sniff-stickers-a...
| and the search https://www.google.com/search?q=scratch-and-
| sniff+mercaptan&... actually turns up a bunch of present-day
| gas vendors that will send them to you on request!
| dmurray wrote:
| Natural gas is odourless, so the smell of a gas leak is
| artificially chosen. They could have just made all the piped
| gas smell like croissants instead.
| rendaw wrote:
| Or is it that they made all croissants stamp-scented instead?
| tempodox wrote:
| Wonderful, I want one! Say what you will, the French have good
| taste.
|
| Naturally, this also poses some serious questions:
|
| - Will this lead to more croissants being eaten? Everyone within
| reach of such a stamp could be affected. Will bakeries have to
| brace themselves?
|
| - How will this affect the stamp collector scene? Will they flip
| upside down to get one of these? Will they eat more croissants?
|
| Only time can tell!
| wiether wrote:
| You can order them here: https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-
| croissant-au-beurre
| batterylake wrote:
| Who said Europe can't innovate
| classified wrote:
| Who said we can't have nice things?
| buyucu wrote:
| I want one! Seriously, this should be a thing with more scents.
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| > artisan croissants [...] "emblem of French gastronomy,"
|
| and yet italian cornetti are better _grin_
| modo_mario wrote:
| I'm quite sad that here in Belgium companies now often use stamps
| that aren't actual little bits of paper anymore but ink stamps on
| the envelope.
|
| I hope that doesn't spread. I have a generational stamp
| collection that I'd love to keep expanding.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| In the US businesses that send any significant amount of mail
| have used "postage machines" (which print right onto the
| envelope) for decades. Physical stamps (though they're self-
| adhesive now, no licking) are for very low volume mail users,
| like individuals.
| wkjagt wrote:
| In The Netherlands you can buy digital "stamps" online. They're
| nine characters you write in a square pattern on the envelope.
| amelius wrote:
| Does the IRS use stamps too?
| seydor wrote:
| Also stamp-scented croissants?
| sunshine-o wrote:
| The sad part is France annihilated most of the last small
| independent bakers a few years ago when they they jacked up
| energy prices.
|
| It is now quite hard to find a really good croissant there.
|
| On the bright side the new Renault 5 looks fantastic [0]
|
| - [0] https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/r5-e-tech-
| electr...
| sofixa wrote:
| > The sad part is France annihilated most of the last small
| independent bakers a few years ago when they they jacked up
| energy prices.
|
| What? Source? "Last small independent bakers" What? France is
| full with bakers. There are bakeries everywhere, even villages
| have a bakery. Most are mom and pop shops.
|
| And what do you mean "they" jacked up prices? There was a war
| that severely impacted energy markets, and France had to
| nationalise the national electricity provider to cover the
| massive gap because most of that price difference was passed on
| to consumers. From what I recall, France was one of the
| countries that isolated the most.
| samzub wrote:
| Annihilated is very much exaggerated, even if the bakery sector
| is changing for sure and is facing the same issues of inflation
| as everyone.
|
| Number of bakeries is stable around 33 000 in 2025, down from
| 36 500 in 1990 [0][1] Revenues are up for both independant and
| franchised, and while the franchises grow faster than
| independants, they represent >90% of the total bakeries.
|
| [0] article and data from 2025:
| https://boulangerie.org/economie/ [1] article from 2023, data
| from 2022: https://www.artisans-gourmands.fr/project/la-
| boulangerie-pat...
| sunshine-o wrote:
| I don't know, The Hill reported [0] that:
|
| > The renegotiation -- brokered by the French government --
| comes as many of France's 33,000 bakeries face financial ruin
| amid spiking energy costs spurred in part by the Russian
| invasion of Ukraine. > > Energy suppliers like TotalEnergies
| and EDF have agreed to allow the country's bakeries to
| renegotiate their contracts if they struggle to pay their
| bills due to rising energy and crop prices, according to
| Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. > > These companies have
| agreed in principle "to dissolve contracts when prices have
| risen prohibitively high and unsustainable for some
| bakeries," Le Maire told reporters.
|
| The precise number of 33 000 bakeries would mean that all of
| them faced financial ruin?
|
| That's a bit much.
|
| I remember this was at the time when there was this EU rule
| which mandate to align the price of electricity on gas. Only
| Spain and Portugal did not apply it.
|
| We have to remember those oven use enormous amount of
| electricity and in fact many bakeries do not produce much of
| what they sell on-site. It is often made in factories.
|
| Funny enough there is a better chance that bread you buy in a
| supermarket have been cooked on-site than in a small bakery.
|
| - [0] https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-
| sustainability/379737...
| colangelod wrote:
| Next up... "French officials baffled as to why raccoons are
| attacking mail trucks"
| krmbzds wrote:
| A story about a stamp with no picture of the stamp. Great
| journalism.
|
| Here's the first search result with the actual picture of the
| stamp: https://www.thelocal.fr/20251009/french-post-office-rolls-
| ou...
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