A Brief History

What, exactly, is a madeleine? traditionally madeleines are described as “small, shell-shaped cakes made of flour, eggs, sugar, and butter and baked in molds.” Stories vary about how and when these adorable French tea cakes were born, but most experts agree that they’re named after Madeleine Paulmier, a pastry chef from Commercy, a town in the Lorraine region of France. Some claim that Paulmier created the sweet treat in the nineteenth century, but legend has it that she baked them as early as the eighteenth century for Stanislaw Lezczynski, the Duke of Lorraine, and his son-in-law Louis XV. According to that story, the French king liked the sponge cakes so much that he named them after her.