Beat half a pound of sugar with six eggs and a tablespoonful of orange flower water; when it is slightly frothy add half a pound of sifted flour and half a pound of melted butter. Butter and flour three dozen Madeleine molds and fill them three-quarters full with the preparation, strew sugar over and bake in a medium oven; unmold at once and ice with rum fondant (No. 58).
Ranhofer works in half-pounds and assumes a pastry cook who knows what a madeleine batter should look like. The proportions are equal weights of sugar, flour and butter against six eggs, which makes this an easy recipe to scale.
Madeleines belong to Lorraine, and the recipe immediately before this one in The Epicurean is named for Commercy, the town most often credited with them; the story that they were named for a servant or cook called Madeleine who improvised them for a noble table is traditional rather than documented. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published the book in 1894, and he files these among the small cakes for entremets - the run of petits fours and little sweets sent out near the end of a long service, made in batches of dozens and finished in a dozen different ways. The rum fondant is characteristic of that section: the same plain batter, differently iced, could pass as several distinct items on a menu. Proust's madeleine came nearly twenty years later, in 1913, and did more for the cake's reputation than any pastry chef.