Madeleine

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For other uses, see Madeleine (disambiguation).

A pan used to bake madeleines.

A madeleine or petite madeleine is a traditional sweet from Commercy, a town of the Meuse département in northeastern France. Madeleines are identified by their decorative shell-like shape, which they acquire from being baked in special pans with shell-shaped depressions. Madeleines are cake-like and fairly small. Their flavor is similar to, but somewhat lighter than, pound cake, with a pronounced butter-and-lemon taste. The madeleine can be made in different flavors including vanilla, lemon, orange, and chocolate.

Madeleines are perhaps most famous outside France for their association with involuntary memory in Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time. In the novel, the narrator's memories of childhood are awakened by the aroma and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea.

Madeleine pans can be readily found, even in many places in the United States. Specialty and gourmet cooking stores are all but guaranteed to carry them. If not, there are most likely many websites through which they can be purchased.

The madeleine recipe is basic, consisting of common cookie ingredients such as eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract. Aside from the pans with the traditional mold, few tools are required to successfully bake the traditional dessert. Recipes for a variety of flavors can be found in many cookbooks and on many of the common recipe-based online search engines.

[edit] Trivia

The name Madeleine is derived from Mary Magdalene, like "La Madeleine" and "maudlin." Another story behind the name is that Louis XV of France named the little shell-shaped cookies after his father-in-law's cook, Madeleine Paulmier. His wife, Marie Josephy de Saxony, made them all the rage in the Palace of Versailles.
Madeleines were made in the 2002 action movie, The Transporter, by a character named Lai.
In the 2006 movie Stranger Than Fiction, The main character's love interest was a baker, who mentioned Madeleine's as a bakery item at her store.
It was the sweet chosen to represent France in the Café Europe initiative of the Austrian presidency of the European Union, on Europe Day 2006.
In Proust's great novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), the story begins with the hero's recollections inspired by a piece of madeleine dipped in tea.
The anime series Serial Experiments Lain contains reference to the madeleines in its last episode. This was taken from Proust's novel.