The French Villages Famous For A Single Thing

The oyster beds are visible from the seafront at low tide, laid out in neat rows across the bay like allotments. Cancale has been supplying Paris – and before that, Versailles – since Louis XIV insisted on a regular delivery. The way to do it is at the market stalls by the jetty: a dozen shucked in front of you, eaten standing up, shells thrown onto the beach below. The pile of shells has been accumulating for generations. It is not going anywhere, and neither is Cancale.

In autumn, the whole village turns red. Strings of peppers hang drying from every façade – white walls, timber shutters, peppers – in a display that would look staged if it weren't entirely practical. The Espelette pepper has its own AOP, its own festival, and a heat that stops politely short of aggressive, which is why Basque cooks use it the way the rest of France uses black pepper. Buy it pre-ground, in the corded jars, from a producer rather than a gift shop.

Apt has been candying fruit since the Middle Ages, when it kept the Avignon popes supplied, and it has never seen a reason to stop. Whole melons, clementines, figs and pears are preserved in sugar syrup over weeks until they turn translucent and jewel-like. It’s a slow (slightly unexciting) craft that happens to produce one of the most beautiful things you can put on a table. The Saturday market is the place to buy; a whole candied melon makes a better souvenir than most things sold as keepsake.

The largest place on this list, and the one with the most complicated relationship to its single thing. Dijon gave the mustard its name, then spent decades watching the seeds get grown in Canada. Local producers are now reversing that – Burgundy-grown seed, stone-ground and sold from shops that have been in the same families for generations. Head down to Edmond Fallot's boutique, and they’ll fill a jar in front of you. The sharp stuff, freshly made, bears little resemblance to what's in the supermarket. That's rather the point.

Menton sits in a pocket of microclimate on the Italian border that lets lemons ripen slowly on the tree for most of the year. The result is sweeter, less acidic fruit, treated locally with the reverence other regions reserve for wine. There is a festival every February – the Fête du Citron, running since the 1930s and involving sculptures built from several tonnes of citrus – but the better experience is quieter: a garden of ancient lemon trees, a tart from a pâtisserie that uses nothing else, and a couple of fruits in your bag for the journey home.