Macaroons

I bite into a macaroon. It clings deliciously to my teeth, the perfect end to any meal. That meal could be an interminable Passover seder. Or it could be a brisk lunch in the Stanford White dining room of a mid-Manhattan club whose name I am forbidden to mention in print.

Macaroons fit any situation. But where and how did they start? From the name, we are led straight to Italy, even though modern Italian dictionaries don’t mention them. That’s because the word goes back to an archai