History of
Madeleine
© copyright 2004 by Linda Stradley - United States Copyright
TX 5-900-517- All rights reserved.
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 Madeleine
is a French form of Magdalen (Mary Magdalen, a disciple of Jesus, is mentioned in all four
gospels).
18th Century
- Madeleines are always associated with the little French
town of Commercy, whose bakers were said to have once, long ago, paid a "very large
sum" for the recipe and sold the little cakes packed in oval boxes as a specialty in
the area. Nuns in eighteenth-century France frequently supported themselves and their
schools by making and selling a particular sweet. Commercy once had a convent dedicated to
St. Mary Magdelen. Historians thing that the nuns, probably when all the convents and
monasteries of France were abolished during the French Revolution, sold their recipe to
the bakers.
According to another story or
legend, during the 18th century in the French town of Commercy, in the region of Lorraine,
a young servant girl name Madeleine made them for Stanislas Leszczynska, the deposed king of Poland when
he was exiled to Lorraine. This started the fashion for madeleines' (as they were
named by the Leszczynska). They became popular in Versailles by his daughter Marie, who
was married to Louis XV (1710–1774).
19th Century
Another story lays the origins of the madeleine with Jean Avice, considered
the “master of choux pastry,” who worked as a pastry chef for Prince
Talleyrand
(1754-1838). Jean Avice is said to have invented
the Madeleine in the 19th century by baking little cakes in aspic molds.
20th Century
1923 - They were
made famous by Marcel Proust (1871-1922) in his autobiographical novel
À la recherche du
temps perdu, translated Remembrance
of Things Past,
Volume 1, Swann's Way. This novel was left unfinished upon his death, and his brothers
published the book in 1923. He wrote:
She sent for one of
those squat plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which
look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop
shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had
soaked a morsel of the cake. 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 invaded my senses …
And suddenly the
memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of
madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say
good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me,
dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of
Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into
being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.
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