Food52
Most people know of Proust’s madeleines, even if they’ve never read the first 100 pages of In Search of Lost Time. Those little cakes, dipped in tea, brought Marcel back to the days of his youth at his Aunt Léonie’s home. In Proust’s day, there was likely only one kind of madeleine to be found in the boulangeries of Paris and the provinces: the blond variety, with a familiar lemon or orange scent and a tender crumb. These days, one can find just about every kind of madeleine imaginable: chocolate, almond, pecan, hazelnut, matcha. There are unadorned madeleines and glazed madeleines (quelle horreur!). After learning firsthand how to make them from the excellent cookbook author and teacher Lydie Marshall, I can turn out a batch of classic madeleines at the drop of a chapeau. But for me, the madeleines that stand head and shoulders above the rest will always be the very unorthodox date madeleines that could only be found, until sometime in 1985, at the venerable tearoom on Manhattan’s East 37th Street, between Fifth and Madison, named Mary Elizabeth’s. Mary Elizabeth’s was a popular lunch haunt for people who worked in the nearby Empire State Building and for ladies who shopped at Lord & Taylor and its two now-defunct competitors, B. Altman and Best & Co. You can read online about the history of the establishment and find comments from loyal customers who still hunger for just one more taste of Mary Elizabeth’s coconut cake, crullers, and oatmeal cookies. When my mother came home after a day in the city with a box of Mary Elizabeth’s madeleines, we all rejoiced! What was so special about those madeleines? They weren’t golden, but a deep, almost gingerbready brown; they weren’t soft and light, but dense and chewy; they weren’t laced with citrus, but rather assertively flavored with dates and molasses. Was there a touch of ground cardamom or cloves in the batter, too? Possibly. All I know is they were exotic, and original, and wholly irresistible. I wish I knew the story behind those madeleines. Were they the brainchild of a creative baker determined to think outside the box, or were they just the result of some happy accident? (You know the story of the first tarte Tatin, right?) Did someone make a mistake one day when mixing the batter for date-nut bread and, rather than throwing it out, try to salvage it by baking it in madeleine pans with fingers crossed? Whenever and however these madeleines came about, they had a devoted following among Mary Elizabeth’s customers. I like a challenge, especially when it involves baking. I recently made it my mission to try to resurrect this gone-but-not-forgotten teatime treat. I can’t guarantee it’s identical to the original, but I can promise it will surprise and delight you.
