Madeleines: Those Tasty French Tarts

It is early morning and you are in a hurry. Quickly downing your first espresso of the morning, you noticed a jar of small, yellow cakes. You peer at the collection and recall (or perhaps you asked out of curiosity), “What are those?"

“Madeleines,” you are told.

“That’s nice,” you think and then on a whim decide to try one. It has a light texture and a hint of lemon. In less than a minute you have consumed it all and wonder about a second one.

These delightful French cakes are called Madeleines. Madeleine being the French form of Magdalene. Did Mary Magdalene make these?

Probably not, but it would make a good story to think that the repentant Magdalene decided to bake a sweet cake for the Lord’s company. Perhaps a reminder of honey cakes made for sacrifices to gods of the ancient world. Perhaps Caravaggio even had her holding one in his Penitent Magdalene before it reached its known form.

Nice story it would be. However, the real story, just as interesting and far more believable begins not so very long ago in France. Madeleines hit literary fame because Marcel Proust mentions them in his À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) published in 1923.

In a short passage he describes the cake, how he ate it and, very telling for Proust, how it produced a sensual response. You probably didn’t do it, but Proust dipped his Madeleine in his coffee (you might want to try it—but not too long lest the cake fall to the bottom). He calls the cakes petites madeleines which suggests that perhaps there was a larger version already in existence. Read an excerpt.

But whether there was or whether the appellation was just a sweet comment on their size, we still have to discover their origin.

Two theories hold competing prominence, though I would prefer the second.

One says that a young girl, Madeleine (of course!) who lived in the small village of Commercy, in the Lorraine region of France, had an occasion to meet the lately toppled king of Poland, Stanislas Leszczynski who had been exiled to Lorraine (and who was otherwise famous as the father of Marie Leszczynska, the wife of Louis XV). For some unknown reason (who needs a reason to bake a sweet cake for a friend or acquaintance?), she baked him this sweet treat. Perhaps she only had a small tart pan at hand or she wanted to tease him with just a small taste at a time. In any case, the king, enamored of the cake and the baker, called them affectionately, ‘madeleines’

The other explanation and the one that seems to have some stronger claim to the truth is that the cakes were baked and sold by nuns who might have lived in a long abandoned convent dedicated to Mary Magdalene, having adopted the recipe from an early tradition among the boulangeries of Commercy.

This story would fit with other names of monasteries being associated with their respective products, most notably perhaps Benedictine as a type of brandy produced by Benedictine monks of Fécamp. In other words, as the monks’ brandy might have been first called in French la liqueur bénédictine then shortened to (la) bénédictine, so too the cakes may have started as something like gâteux de Madeleine, then shorted to Madeleine.

Less certain (if we can be any less certain) is why they have a compressed scallop shape. There seems to be no other explanation but that the nuns or dear little Madeleine used a sort of tart pan to make the cakes quickly and easily. Or perhaps the nuns of Commercy were simply good marketers. Make a few small cakes to sell quickly and avoid waste. The little cake caught on as a quick treat, easily cupped in the hand and popped into the mouth.

Madeleines are delightful and whether tasted in a local coffee shop (dipped or not) or on a French avenue are sure to invite discussion of nuns, Polish kings and repentant prostitutes. Or maybe not.

For a recipe, check out: Recipe Zaar. For some other interesting unusual histories of food, read Patricia Stevens', Rare Bits: Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes.



Tom
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