Madeleine (cake)
eggs, almonds or other nuts | |
The madeleine (French pronunciation: .
Madeleines are very small sponge cakes with a distinctive shell-like shape acquired from being baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions. Madeleine-style cookies are popular in a number of culinary traditions.
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British madeleines also use a génoise sponge cake batter but they are baked in dariole moulds. After cooking, these are coated in jam and desiccated coconut, and are usually topped with a glacé cherry.
History
Legend
Several legends are attached to the "invention" of the madeleines.
Other stories do not give the cake a Lorraine origin and lay its invention at the feet of pastry chef Jean Avice, who worked in the kitchens of Prince Talleyrand. Avice is said to have invented the Madeleine in the 19th century by baking little cakes in moulds normally reserved for aspic.[6]
First recipes
The term madeleine, used to describe a small cake, seems to appear for the first time in France in the middle of the 18th century. In 1758, a French retainer of an Irish Jacobite refugee in France, Lord Southwell, was said to prepare "cakes à la Madeleine and other small desserts".[7]
Cakes à la Madeleine
On a pound of flour, you need a pound of butter, eight egg whites & yolks, three fourths of a pound of fine sugar, a half glass of water, a little grated lime, or preserved lemon rind minced very finely, orange blossom praliné; knead the whole together, & make little cakes, that you will serve iced with sugar.
Menon, Les soupers de la Cour ou L'art de travailler toutes sortes d'aliments, p.282 (1755).[8]
The appearance of the madeleine is indicative of the increasing use of metal molds in European baking in the 18th century (see also
In Commercy, the production at a large scale of madeleines is said to have begun in the 1760s.
Literary reference
In In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past), author Marcel Proust uses madeleines to contrast involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by "intelligence", that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust's narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the "essence" of the past. The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the "episode of the madeleine", yet there are at least half a dozen other examples in In Search of Lost Time.[2]
No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
See also
- Bahulu, a Malaysian version of madeleines, inspired by European influence
- Financier, a similar cake with ground almonds and much more butter
References
- ^ "Madeleine | Define Madeleine at Dictionary.com". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2016-03-20.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6.
- ISBN 9782830707250.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-78701-090-1.
- ^ "La Citta Viola (Feb. 2007)" (PDF). No. 3. 2007-03-07. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-02. Retrieved 2016-03-20.
{{cite magazine}}
: Cite magazine requires|magazine=
(help) - ^ "Food News, Recipes, and More". The Food Section. 2004-04-18. Retrieved 2016-03-20.
- ^ Merrett, Robert James (1999). "Eating à l'Anglaise in Provincial France, 1750–1789". Eighteenth-Century Life. 23 (2): 84–96.
- ^ Menon (1755). Les soupers de la Cour ou L'art de travailler toutes sortes d'aliments.
- ISBN 9782221134030.