Day 9: The Madeleine This cookie is like no other in the countdown. It is the only one that uses brown butter in the recipe, the only one baked in a mold, the only one that has egg whites folded into it. No wonder Proust liked them so much!
According to the Larousse Gastronomique, which touts itself as the world’s greatest culinary encyclopedia, the seashell shape that the cookie is baked in is “attributed to Avice, chef of Tallyrand, the French Statesman, who had the idea of baking a pound-cake mixture in aspic moulds.” There are other schools of thought of where the idea came from – one that it originated much earlier in the French town of Commercy. A duke was visiting there in 1755 and was quite taken with a cookie baked by a local peasant girl named, wait for it…. Madeleine. No matter what the true origin, this cookie is delicious!
