Macaron-Cedar Herald Index

A macaron ( , ) or French macaroon ( )

is a sweet meringue-based confection made with egg white, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond meal, and often food colouring.

Macaron

According to legend, the macaron was introduced in France during the Renaissance by the Italian chef of queen Catherine de Medici, but a confection by the general description appears in the 8th century in the Cormery Abbey. Since the 19th century, a typical Parisian-style macaron is a sandwich cookie filled with a ganache, buttercream or jam.

Macaron

As baked, the circular macaron displays a smooth, square-edged top, a ruffled circumference—referred to as the "crown" or "foot" (or "pied")—and a flat base. It is mildly moist and easily melts in the mouth.

Macaron

Macarons can be found in a wide variety of flavours that range from traditional sweet such as raspberry or chocolate to savoury (as a foie gras).

Name

There is some variation in whether the term macaron or macaroon is used, and the related coconut macaroon is often confused with the macaron. In North America, most bakers have adopted the French spelling of macaron for the meringue-based treat to distinguish the two. Stanford professor of linguistics Daniel Jurafsky describes how the two confections have a shared history with macaroni (Italian , from Greek μακαρία). Jurafsky notes that French words ending with "-on" that were borrowed into English in the 16th and 17th centuries are usually spelled with "-oon" (for example: balloon, cartoon, platoon). In the UK, many bakeries continue to use the term "macaroon".

History

According to Dan Jurafsky in Slate magazine, Arab troops from Ifrīqiya (now Tunisia) brought new techniques (papermaking) and foods like lemons, rice and pistachios with them during their occupation of Sicily in 827. These included many nut-based sweets such as fālūdhaj and lausinaj—baked goods with sweet almond cream inside. These pastries had been handed down by the Sassanid shahs in Persia, where the almond cake was made to celebrate the Zoroastrian New Year (Nowruz). In Sicily (and in Toledo, Spain, another contact point between Muslim and Christian culture) fālūdhaj and lausinaj developed into various desserts, like the almond-paste tarts called marzapane and caliscioni. In 1154 Muhammad al-Idrisi reported the production of noodles, which was also carried out in Sicily for the first time. Under the collective term Maccarruni, the Arabs referred to ground grain products as noodles and pastries. The Italians developed maccheroni - today’s "macaroni" - from Maccarruni, from which modern macarons are derived.

The culinary encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique (1988) traces the origin of the macarons back to a French monastery in Cormery in the 8th century (791), also saying that according to legend the pastries had the shape of monks' navels.

A Swiss online encyclopedia on the history of baking says that the almond biscuits were brought from al-Andalus (present-day Spain) to Marrakesh (present-day Morocco) in the early 11th century by the sultan and first king of the Almoravid dynasty Yusuf ibn Tashfin, and that it was served mainly during Ramadan.

A popular legend tells that the macaron was introduced in France by a chef of Catherine de Medici, however, a thorough investigation of records listing service personnel who worked with Catherine since her arrival in France until her death revealed the absence of any Italian chefs.

In the 1790s, macarons began to gain fame when two Carmelite nuns, seeking asylum in Nancy during the French Revolution, baked and sold the macaron cookies in order to pay for their housing. These nuns became known as the "Macaron Sisters". In these early stages, macarons were served without special flavours or fillings.

It was not until the 1930s that macarons began to be served as sandwich cookies with the addition of jams, liqueurs, and spices. The macaron as it is known today, composed of two almond meringue discs filled with a layer of buttercream, jam, or ganache, was originally called the "Gerbet" or the "Paris macaron." Pierre Desfontaines, of the French pâtisserie Ladurée, has sometimes been credited with its creation in the early part of the 20th century, but another baker, Claude Gerbet, also claims to have invented it. French macaron bakeries became trendy in North America in the 2010s.