Mademoiselle Proust, petite madeleine lorraine

Two humps, it’s camel. One hump, it’s a dromadery… or a madeleine. No hump ? That’s not a madeleine. Maybe that’s a unicorn.

La madeleine is a specialty of Lorraine, my home place. The legend says a young girl called Madeleine was working in the kitchens of the palace of the King/Duke Stanislas. She had to prepare a quatre-quarts cake, but she couldn’t find the mold for it, but she found a mold that was then used to shape some seafood mousse like shellfish… The small cakes were cute. They were served to the Princess and her guests. They became a new favorite.

The recipe is the same as the quatre-quarts.

Quatre-quarts, the simple butter cake

Same proportions of the 4 ingredients. Weight the eggs first.

Flavoring can be vanilla essence, a little honey, lemon zest… I combine the 3, very little of each. I used a sudachi lemon and yellow cane sugar. I don’t melt the butter, I find it’s better.

Refrigerate during one hour.

How do you bake them ? I can’t tell you. That depends on your oven and the number and size of your madeleines. You have to try. I have changed of oven, that changed it all.

I bake 6 small ones (1 tbs very full of batter), oven is preheated. 5 minutes a 170 degree Celsius (340 F), then 4 minutes 130C (270 F).

I used to bake them 6 minutes at 180 C (360 F), then 150 C (300F). I have a book with a similar recipe, they bake theirs 10 min a 220C (430 F), then 10 min a 170C (340 F).

The first time, try 180 C (360 F) and check after 4 minutes if a hump is appearing…

Roughly, you lower the temperature half way, at that point the hump is just formed, the top is not yet colored. It’s cooked when the sides are golden, the hump sligthly yellow.

Let them cool before getting them out, they are very soft when they are hot and harden in a few minutes. Let them cool completely. The top becomes a little shiny and sticky as the sugar goes up (ignore the recipes that paint the top of madeleines with syrup).

I could have used more butter to coat the mold… Also I have holes and I need to change of brand of baking powder (this time I have mixed it well with the flour…).

Practice makes perfect.

They get better in the next 2 days. You can store them in a metallic box and get rid of them. I don’t know. Give some to friends you hate and you’d like to see becoming very big…

1 petite madeleine (with 1 egg, you make 12):

Cal 69.5 F3.9 C 7.7 P 0.7

The writer Marcel Proust and his auntie had a way to use them. Take a cup of tisane (herb tea). It seems that was tilleul (lime, linden), but the English translator dropped it…

Mais à l’instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau

toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d’extraordinaire en moi. Un

plaisir délicieux m’avait envahi, isolé, sans la notion de sa cause…. D’où avait pu me venir cette puissante joie ? Je sentais qu’elle était liée au goût du thé et du gâteau, mais qu’elle le dépassait infiniment, ne devait pas être de même nature. D’où venait-elle ? Que signifiait-elle ?…

Et tout d’un coup le souvenir m’est apparu. Ce goût, c’était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (parce que ce jour-là je ne sortais pas avant l’heure de la messe), quand j’allais lui dire bonjour dans sa chambre, ma tante Léonie m’offrait après l’avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul.

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.

So dip it :

And write a series of novels.

Or just bite one :

French desserts – Dessert francais (compilation)