Dish · french
Madeleine
A small shell-shaped sponge cake, dense and buttery, with a distinctive hump on top from the batter rising fast in a hot oven, often scented with lemon.
Where it comes from
The cake is associated with the town of Commercy in Lorraine, where local bakers were selling shell-molded cakes by the eighteenth century. Marcel Proust later made the madeleine a byword for involuntary memory in his writing.
What cooks argue about
The technical fight is the hump: chilling the batter before baking, then starting it in a hot oven, so the outside sets while the center keeps rising, and recipes vary widely on both steps.
Versions
Nobody has published a madeleine here yet. When somebody cooks one from a video and publishes it, their version appears in this list, with a link back to the original.
What goes in it
Each one opens everything else made with it.
all purpose flour
butter
egg
lemon