By Ines Keane
Turr贸n comes in two textures, and both are named after places. The hard bar is Alicante. The soft one is Jijona. It is a tidy pair, and it hides an odd fact that the sources keep returning to: the protected area for both names is a single municipality, Jijona, and the city of Alicante is not part of it.
Hard and soft
Wikipedia describes the hard type, duro or Alicante, as whole almonds in a mass of eggs, honey and sugar, with almonds making up 60 per cent. The soft type, blando or Jijona, has the almonds ground to a paste with oil added to help it bind, and almonds make up 64 per cent. It is shaped as a rectangular tablet or a round cake.
Foods and Wines from Spain, a Spanish food-promotion website, gives the same two products a texture each. Alicante is breakable at first, with crunchy almond pieces of irregular size, and turns sticky and elastic as it dissolves, while the wafer melts on contact with saliva. Jijona is slightly breakable and becomes smooth and velvety when chewed. It describes the soft one as sweet with herbal notes from the honey, a warm, slightly smoky flavour from the roasted almonds, and an aroma of spices such as ginger and cardamom. That last description is the site’s own and we treat it as promotional.
What is in it
Both PGI pages list the same four things: almonds, honey, sugar and egg. The almonds may be Comuna, Mallorca, Marcona, Mollar or Planeta varieties, from Mediterranean-climate regions in Spain and abroad. The honey is rosemary, orange blossom or thousand-flower, and at least 10 per cent of it must come from the same areas as the almonds. The sugar is granulated, preferably as white as possible. The eggs are fresh, using the semi-liquid yolks and dried whites.
Directo al Paladar, a Spanish food magazine, in an article dated 21 December 2025, gives the honey as orange blossom, rosemary and lavender and says almond-blossom honey is not used because it is too bitter. The two lists differ on lavender and thousand-flower. We report both.
The almond share
Here the sources part. Wikipedia gives a single figure for each type: 60 per cent for hard, 64 per cent for soft. The magazine gives ranges: 42 to 60 per cent for Alicante and 52 to 64 per cent for the soft type. The magazine adds that the cheapest way to cut cost is to reduce the almonds and raise the sugar. Both PGI pages put their composition in tables that were images, which we could not read, so we cannot say which figures match the registered rules. Our reading: the single figures may be the upper limits of the ranges. No source says so.
How the soft one is made
The magazine and the PGI page describe the same outline. Almonds are toasted, honey and sugar are cooked together, and egg white is added to form a white mass. Toasted almonds are mixed in. For Jijona the mass goes to a stone mill and is ground to a creamy, toasted-coloured paste, then cooked again in a vessel called a boixet, with steam and a paddle that keeps moving. The magazine says the timing is not preset and the master turr贸n maker judges when the texture is right. The PGI page says the mixture reaches “inversion” after about two and a half hours. We report both and do not reconcile them. Chopped toasted almonds go in for texture, the mass is poured into moulds and rests for 24 hours, and it is cut into bars.
The magazine says Jijona turr贸n takes about a week to complete and the Alicante bar is finished in a day. It also says the process has changed little in five centuries and that cutting and packaging are now mechanised.
What the protected names cover
The PGI page says the production area is the municipality of Jijona in Alicante, Valencian Community, covering 16,129 hectares, and that 24 manufacturing and packaging companies make both Jijona and Alicante turr贸n under the PGI. Average output is about 5 million kilograms a year. About 11 per cent is exported and the rest sold in Spain. Of the PGI turr贸n, 55 per cent is marketed as Alicante and 45 per cent as Jijona. The products are graded Supreme Quality or Extra Quality.
The magazine says the same twenty-four firms account for more than 70 per cent of the world’s turr贸n and that similar turr贸n made elsewhere must be labelled only “blando” or “duro”. It also says that 35 to 40 per cent of the almonds used come from elsewhere, mainly California, because local almonds cannot meet demand, and that harvests abroad start about six weeks before Spain’s September harvest. Wikipedia lists a third protected turr贸n, Torr贸 d’Agramunt, in Catalonia, and says nothing more about the protection dates.
How old is it
Wikipedia says turr贸n has been known in Jijona “at least since the 15th century”, that the sixteenth-century Manual de Mujeres probably holds the oldest surviving Spanish recipe, and that the name likely comes from the Latin torrere, to toast. It adds that the modern sweet may descend from a Muslim recipe in Islamic Spain or an ancient Greek one, and presents both as possibilities. The PGI pages say a tradition of over 500 years and call Jijona “The Cradle of Turron”. Wikipedia also says it is usually eaten as a dessert around Christmas in Spain and Italy, and the PGI page calls it a traditional Christmas specialty.
Dates in order
- At least the fifteenth century: turr贸n known in Jijona, according to Wikipedia.
- Sixteenth century: the Manual de Mujeres recipe, according to Wikipedia.
- Over 500 years: the tradition in Jijona, according to the PGI pages.
- 21 December 2025: the date of the magazine article.
Side by side
The two bars share ingredients and a town, and differ in the mill, the second cooking and the days it takes. Almond shares are reported as single figures in one source and as ranges in another. Honey is listed with different flowers. Cooking time is given as judgement in one source and as about two and a half hours in another.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia, a promotional food website, and a food magazine article. We read no regulator’s page, no producer’s page and no EU register, so the rules above are second-hand.
Questions a buyer would ask
Is the bar hard or soft? Does the box say Jijona or Alicante with the PGI mark, or only “blando” or “duro”? Is it graded Supreme or Extra? Where do the almonds come from, and what share are they? We give no brand, no weight and no price.
What we left out
We left out the other nougats of Italy, Peru and elsewhere that Wikipedia lists, since this piece is about two protected names. We left out the claim of a pre-Roman Italian nougat, which Wikipedia itself flags as unreliable, and every price, sales figures beyond those on the PGI page, and every company name.
Roam first. Shop later.