Also Cassoulet de Castelnaudary, Cassoulet toulousain
White beans baked slowly in a deep clay dish with duck confit, pork and garlicky sausage, under a crust that's broken and formed again.
What makes it cassoulet
Dried white beans, cooked slowly until creamy but whole.
Confit duck or goose, with pork and Toulouse sausage.
Baked in a cassole, the crust broken and pushed under several times.
Where it comes from
It's named for the cassole, the glazed earthenware dish it cooks in. Castelnaudary tells of a siege in the Hundred Years' War when the townspeople pooled what they had into one pot — a good story, not a proven one. The beans came from the Americas in the sixteenth century, and before them it was probably made with broad beans.
Three towns claim it and each does it differently: Castelnaudary with pork and duck confit, Toulouse with its sausage, and Carcassonne sometimes with mutton. The cooking writer Prosper Montagné famously called them the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of cassoulet.
How it varies
Castelnaudary
Pork, pork rind and confit — the version most people mean.