Until I visited Paris in the early 2000s, I ignored the existence of madeleines. I remember sitting at the Café de Flore and browsing the menu, looking for something to accompany the chocolat viennois I was about to order. The least expensive of the biscuits was called madeleine. So I asked the proud waiter for a description and he politely explained. Then when he brought my order, I was surprised to find that madeleine was more like a cake than a biscuit that one usually dunks in milk, coffee, or tea. Had I known the story behind the name, I would have liked it better ...
Several theories co-exist about the madeleine: a) that it was brought from Spain by the pilgrims of St. Jacques de Compostelle during the Middle Ages, b) that it was developed by professional chefs in the service of either Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679) or the notorious Talleyrand (1754-1838), or c) that it was made in haste for a reception held in 1755 at Commercy in France by the titular king of Poland Stanislas. The last option involves a young servant by the name Madeleine Paulmier using her grandmother's recipe when the chef failed to present their employer with dessert. His guest Louis XV, the king of France, named the cakes after the servant girl and his wife Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislas, introduced them to Versailles.
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| Portrait of Queen Marie (Leszczyńska) in 1753 by Jean-Marc Nattier |
A recipe was featured as early as 1758 in Les Soupers de la Cour by Joseph Menon, where the cakes are labelled entremets. "Gâteaux à la Madeleine. Sur une livre de farine, il faut une livre de beurre, huits oeufs blanc & jaune, trois quarterons de sucre fin, un demi-verre d'eau, un peu de citron vert rapé, ou citron confit haché très fin, fleurs d'orange pralinées; paîtrissez tout ensemble, et en faites des petits gâteaux, que vous servez glacées de sucre." This ratio didn't change much in the next hundred years because the same amounts of the basic ingredients were featured in Le nouveau pâtissier-glacier français et étranger (1865) by Pierre Lacam. Interestingly, neither author mentioned baking in scallops, as was the usage in the early days to honor St. Jacques (whose emblem is the scallop), or scallop-like tins, which is the fashion nowadays. Menon vaguely referred to individual cakes and Lacam advised using tall fluted baking tins.
Another point of comparison to modern versions is the flavor. Citron was obviously a must but vanilla not always there. The medieval & Renaissance love for orange flowers continued well into the nineteenth century. Of course, Menon shared the luxurious version that used caramelized orange flowers (!) but the orange flower water in Lacam's recipe also gave the madeleines an exotic flavor that several of us would probably dislike.
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