ALL the Rowntrees are rightly remembered and revered for their contributions to York: Joseph, Henry Isaac, Seebohm et al. But one man who had a crucial role in the early years of their business has been virtually forgotten. He wasn't a Rowntree. He wasn't from York. He wasn't even English.

Claude Gaget was a French confectioner who introduced the York family to gums and pastilles.

That was 120 years ago. Today Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles have sales of £46 million a year. More than 100 million tubes of the chewy sweets were bought in 2000. It is Nestl Rowntree's oldest product, and one of its most successful.

Yet it may be that the humble pastille is even more important to the company than those figures suggest. Some argue that without Claude Gaget's intervention, Rowntree's may never have expanded into such a big concern - or might even have gone under.

In the 1870s, the Rowntree business, then operating at Tanner's Moat, was based around 'Rock Cocoa'.

Its main rival, Cadbury's in Birmingham, had moved on to produce "safe and untainted" Cocoa Essence. It had also invested in a Van Houten press, enabling the manufacture of eating chocolate. Sales and profits were rising.

Joseph and Henry Isaac Rowntree's conservative attitude to product development and promotion meant they were losing out. Profits were low and it is doubtful that Joseph could have afforded a Van Houten press even if he had wanted one.

Fortunes changed when M Gaget called on Joseph and Henry Isaac with samples of pastilles. No one knows what had brought him to York, although M Gaget had worked for the sweet-makers Compagnie Francaise of Paris, which had a London office.

Pastilles and gums were, up to this point, almost a French monopoly. But Joseph realised that a firm able to match the quality at a lower price would gain an advantage.

The boiling pans needed for their manufacture were far cheaper than the Van Houten chocolate press. So the necessary equipment was bought and M Gaget was set to work.

"Joseph Rowntree was insistent upon having products of unrivalled quality, and at first refused the samples Gaget began making at Tanner's Moat," a history of Rowntree's recounts. On one memorable occasion, Joseph is said to have told M Gaget that his latest batch were fit only to be thrown in the Ouse.

Finally, in 1881, the Frenchman devised a recipe that satisfied his boss. The firm began manufacturing fruit pastilles, and they were sold loose and unadvertised in 4lb wooden boxes for a penny an ounce.

Rowntree's Crystallised Gum Pastilles were an instant success. Their only competition came from a limited supply of expensive French imports.

And the impact on the business was immediate and striking. Sales and profits went up. To accommodate their expanding pastille trade, the partners bought an old flour mill on North Street, adjoining Tanner's Moat.

The number of workers about doubled between 1880 and 1883. Sales leaped from £44,000 at the beginning of the decade to £99,000 at the end. Average yearly profits were nearly four and half times higher than in the previous ten years.

The gum pastilles had brought the company through a rocky time, which included the death in 1883 of Henry Isaac from peritonitis.

Colin Lea, of Markham Street, York, has researched the life of M Gaget after discovering a family connection. "He was my great grandfather's brother's father in law," he said.

He discovered that his forebear's full name was Auguste Claude Gaget. And Mr Lea is in no doubt about his contribution to one of York's most important industrial concerns.

"He saved Rowntree's. They were going through a bad time. Henry died and they had a run of misfortune. They started selling the pastilles and business picked up. Gaget was their salvation."

Mr Lea's inquiries have filled in some of the gaps in M Gaget's life. He discovered that the Frenchman fought in the Franco-Prussian war and was at one time taken prisoner by the Germans. When he came to York, he stayed at a house in Queen Street, next door to Rowntree's, before these buildings were pulled down to make way for the factory's expansion.

Notes by G Wright, a Rowntree's contemporary to M Gaget, described him as "an exceedingly clever confectioner, passionately devoted to his work. "He, with the help of Joseph Rowntree, brought many novelties in gums to perfection."

The modern Nestl Rowntree factory on Haxby Road now bristles with cutting- edge technology. It is hard to imagine the primitive conditions in those early days, when Rowntree's entire male staff numbered about 30.

But another story recounted by Mr Wright gives some ideas of the rickety nature of factory life in the 1880s.

"Mr Gaget's pastilles section was in a 'lean-to' building behind what was afterwards the time office, where Henry Piercy was the first timekeeper.

"It was when the building operations were going on over Gaget's lean-to that Mr BG's hammer fell through the roof and gave Gaget a tap on the head.

"When he went after his hammer, he found that Mr Gaget had gone to Mr Joseph and complained that he was 'killed'. However, he survived the shock and lived for a few years after."

He may have survived a hammer blow, but M Gaget's health later failed him. He had to retire on medical grounds in 1895, and died in 1906 at his daughter's home in Dewsbury Terrace, York.

An obituary in the Cocoa Worker's Magazine paid fulsome tribute. "Mr Gaget introduced several kinds of sweets, notably Almond Paste, the sale for which has developed largely during recent years, and he also devoted a considerable amount of time to the introduction of Clear Gums.

"As a workman he was most painstaking, and always insisted on the work from his department being turned out in the best possible manner."

Three Rowntree's managers represented the works at his York Cemetery funeral, and Joseph Rowntree and the other directors sent a wreath and an expression of sympathy. Oddly, Mr Lea has discovered that M Gaget was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave alongside 11 others. But his legacy is the product. Rowntree's has continued to develop new variations on his popular creation: pastilles in boxes for the Fifties cinema-going audiences; Fruit Pastilles Body Parts in 1998 and Burstin' Berries two years ago.

This summer Nestl Rowntree is launching a whole range of products, including Rowntree's Alien Invasion, with the sweets changing shape and flavour; Rowntree's Fruit Squoosh, containing individually-wrapped sheets in three fruit flavours, ideal for lunch boxes; and more Rowntree's Ice Screamers.

It seems a great shame that the man who started it all is forgotten. Perhaps we should raise a monument to Auguste Claude Gaget. Or maybe remember the Frenchman with an annual Pastille Day.