Madeleines are very small sponge cakes with a distinctive shell-like shape acquired from being baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions.

The story goes that, in 1755, Louis XV, son-in-law of the duke, charmed by the little cakes prepared by Madeleine Paulmier, named them after her, while his wife, Maria Leszczyńska, introduced them soon afterward to the court in Versailles.

Other stories do not give the cake a Lorraine origin and lay its invention at the feet of pastry chef Jean Avice, who worked in the kitchens of Prince Talleyrand.

In 1758, a French retainer of Lord Southwell, an Irish Jacobite refugee in France, was said to prepare "cakes à la Madeleine and other small desserts".

Several mentions of the madeleine are made by culinary writers during the Napoleonic era, in particular in the recipe books of Antonin Carême and by famous gastronomer Grimod de la Reynière.

[10] In addition to being sold at the rail station, thus accelerating their spread through the country,[4] it is likely that the cakes were exported to Paris along with the marmalade from Bar-le-duc and the croquantes from Rheims.

The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the "episode of the madeleine", yet there are at least half a dozen other examples in In Search of Lost Time.

[2] 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.