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The perfect madeleine, with a little help from experts including Yotam Ottolenghi and Michel Roux

Beth O’Brien roadtests six recipes and creates her own variation with maple syrup and pecans

Beth O'Brien

Sun Mar 10 2024 - 05:00

Madeleines are quintessentially French, popularised by Proust’s evocative discourse in In Search of Lost Time (1927): “Petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell ... 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 invaded my senses ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself.”

Madeleines, for Proust, act as a portal into vivid memories of his childhood: their distinctive shape and flavour transport him back to summers spent as a child in Normandy.

Although my memories of madeleines are not as poignant as Proust’s, I do remember eating madeleines as a child in France, and the little scalloped cakes still bring me a lot of joy – particularly when dipped in a cup of tea or coffee. I made and compared six different recipes here in order to determine what factors contribute to the perfect madeleine. They are from Roux, St John, Cedric Grolet (via Dorie Greenspan), Felicity Cloake, Yotam Ottolenghi and Edd Kimber.

Ingredients

The essential ingredients in a madeleine are melted butter, sugar, flour, raising agent and eggs. Several of the recipes go the extra mile and use brown butter (St John, Grolet, Cloake), which greatly improves the flavour. Most recipes use plain flour and baking powder – except St John, which uses self-raising flour, and does not seem to rise quite as dramatically. I think there is not enough raising agent in self-raising flour and you are better off using plain flour and having complete control over raising agent. Roux, Grolet and Kimber all flavour with lemon (zest or juice), while St John, Grolet, Cloake and Ottolenghi all include honey, adding a lovely floral note. Alternative flavours are orange blossom water (Cloake), saffron (Ottolenghi) and Earl Grey (Grolet), all of which are delicious, but perhaps not strictly traditional.

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Mixing method

There are several options for mixing: Roux, Grolet and Kimber lightly whisk the eggs and sugar, before incorporating the rest of the ingredients (Kimber also rubs lemon zest into the sugar first, to enhance the citrus flavour). St John and Cloake whisk more vigorously, for several minutes, until the eggs and sugar have increased dramatically in volume, before incorporating the rest of the ingredients. Ottolenghi uses a food processor. Whisking the eggs and sugar vigorously at the beginning results in by far the lightest, softest texture.

To chill or not to chill?

All recipes except Roux’s recommend that the batter be chilled for at least an hour, or overnight. It seems that this is the best way to achieve the distinctive hump on the madeleine. By keeping the batter cold until the last minute, and perhaps chilling the tin itself, then placing both into a hot oven, the heat takes longer to reach the centre of the madeleine, so the batter is pushed upwards.

Baking

Interestingly, all recipes recommend that the tins be greased with butter and dusted with flour before the madeleine mixture is added. I find that the flour is not entirely absorbed by the batter, and some dry parts remain, ruining the fluted look of the underside of the madeleine. My solution is to use a neutral spray oil (such as sunflower or canola), which will ensure the madeleine does not stick to the tin, but does not affect the appearance of the shell. The madeleines should be baked in a relatively hot oven (190 degrees) in order to produce the hump, and avoid drying out the interior of the cake. After baking, Ottolenghi glazes his with honey, before adding chopped pistachios, and Kimber glazes his with a simple lemon icing. The glaze definitely adds a lot in terms of texture and flavour, but could get in the way if you are planning to dunk your madeleine in a hot drink.

Recipe: Maple pecan madeleines