The famous madeleine

The inspiration for this blog came from Proust's madeleine moment in À la recherche du temps perdu, translated into English as In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (1922-1931). In an episode within this seminal text, Proust absent mindedly consumes the crumbs of a madeleine soaked in tea and is overwhelmed by the waves of nostalgia which come rushing over him. The swelling tides of memory ebb and flow within his consciousness as Proust tries to pinpoint this moment of heightened experience.

"She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, 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 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. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?"

Proust's beautifully constructed language whisks the reader through his stream of consciousness; desperately trying to recall the memory attached to this taste, he becomes lost in "an abyss of uncertainty".

"Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has traveled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now I feel nothing; it has stopped, has perhaps sunk back into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise again? Ten times over I must essay the task, must lean down over the abyss. And each time the cowardice that deters us from every difficult task, every important enterprise, has urged me to leave the thing alone, to drink my tea and to think merely of the worries of to-day and my hopes for to-morrow, which can be brooded over painlessly. 

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. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

I beg any reader to refrain from licking their lips at this positively mouthwatering description! The sublime combination of flavours evokes an uncontrollable response as Proust becomes lost in a haze of almost narcotic rapture.

Having put down Proust's writing for all of five minutes, I was already looking up the recipe for French madeleines. I soon found a Raymond Blanc recipe in a suitably snooty Guardian article entitled "Rose Prince's Baking Club" which pledges to show its readership "the way to beautiful bread and consummate cake". Boasting the "triumph" of Raymond Blanc's recipe thanks to its all-important "butteriness and delightfully crisp edges".

Cultural snobbery aside, I decided to give the recipe a try in hopes of producing a moment of Proustian clarity.



The recipe read as follows:

Makes 12-20 madeleines

Use either an authentic madeleine tin (£9.29 – makes 12 – fromlakeland.co.uk) or small paper cases/bun tin. You will need to butter it, even if it is a non-stick tin, to get the edges crisp.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

Ingredients

2 large eggs

75g caster sugar

10g light brown sugar

15g runny honey

90g plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

90g unsalted butter, melted

Method

• Beat the eggs, sugars and honey together with a whisk or wooden spoon to make a sloppy but smooth batter.

• Sift in the flour with the baking powder, then fold in with a metal spoon to keep the mixture light. Stir in the melted butter.

• Fill the tins or cases three-quarters full (add flavours mentioned above at this stage, if you wish; you can also sprinkle on top) and then bake for about 5-8 minutes.

• The cakes are ready when the centres are puffed and feel firm to the touch, and the edges are a good deep tan colour. If you eat them too pale, they have less flavour. You must judge the correct timing.

So, after running into every cake shop within a five-mile radius and still lacking a "scallop shaped tin", I made do with what I had. The recipe was incredibly simple and took less than 30 minutes to complete.

And, whilst taking more of an Essex housewife understanding "deep tan", the madeleines weren't half bad! (Now look who's being a snob!)

These cakes are delicious; sweet, buttery and moist whilst remaining incredibly light and the smell... it's so rich and deep, I couldn't help but think of Paris and those warm, comforting smells of the patisserie.

I blinked and three of the buggers disappeared!

The smell of sweet butter still lingers on my fingertips as I write this entry, making me salivate as I attempt to resist taking another. It is no wonder that these rich and wondrously light cakes hold so much power over Proust's memory, awakening a symphony of tastes, textures and smells.

Hope this wasn't too long and even if I lost you half way through, with a bit of luck those madeleines will have recaptured your attention.