Madeleines

This is the favorite snack of children and Proust’s madeleine of many parents. Discover all you need to know about the famous shell-shaped cupcake.

As often, two versions exist concerning the origin of the madeleine. In the first, we are in 1755 in Commercy, in the Meuse. The Duke of Lorraine, Stanislas Leszczyński, organized a reception. Only his steward and his cook have quarreled and he has not the slightest cake to propose to his guests. This is where a young cook called Madeleine Paulmier, who proposes to make cupcakes which she keeps the recipe of her grandmother. It is a success, the duke baptizes the cakes in tribute to his savior and Commercy becomes the world capital of the madeleine. Another version says that the madeleine was invented by another “Madelaine” who molded cupcakes in scallops to offer them to the pilgrims of Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle.

The madeleine of Proust

“She sent for one of those short and plump cakes called Petites Madeleines, which seem to have been molded into the grooved valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, overwhelmed by the gloomy day and the prospect of a sad morrow, I brought to my lips a spoonful of tea, where I had allowed a piece of madeleine to soften. But at the very moment when the sip mixed with the crumbs of the cake touched my palate, I shuddered, attentive to what was happening extraordinary in me. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated, without the notion of its cause”

This famous passage from In Search of Lost Time, where Marcel Proust finds the flavor of his childhood in Combray by swallowing a piece of madeleine, gave rise to the most famous metaphor (a “madeleine of Proust” is now an event which brings back memories of childhood) and made the madeleine famous. Yet she almost did not get it. In the first version of La recherche, the madeleine was indeed … a biscuit.

Fanny Rivron