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Madeleine Commercy
Place in a copper basin three eggs, four ounces sugar, six drops vanilla essence and one teaspoon orange-flower water; beat with a whisk ten minutes, add four ounces sifted flour, gently mix with skimmer, then add four ounces melted butter and gently mix again until well amalgamated. Line bottom of a small pastry pan with a sheet buttered paper, drop in preparation, neatly smooth surface, then set in oven twenty minutes. Remove, let rest five minutes. Turn the madeleine on a pastry grating, lift up paper. Spread three tablespoons of orange marmalade glaze over the surface with a glace a l'orange, sprinkle one-half ounce peeled, chopped pistachio over all, let rest five minutes. Then cut in twelve even pieces, dress on a dish with a napkin and serve.
This is a madeleine batter baked as one flat sheet rather than in shell moulds, then glazed and cut into fingers. The critical part is the last folding: the melted butter goes in at the end and will collapse the whipped eggs if you stir hard.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F; a thin sheet of this batter is set and lightly browned at the edges in about 20 minutes. Test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock.
- Weights to volumeFour ounces sugar is about a half cup plus two tablespoons; four ounces flour is roughly a scant cup, spooned and levelled; four ounces butter is one stick.
- Copper basinAn unlined copper bowl was standard for whisking eggs, and it does help stabilise the foam. Any wide metal bowl works. What matters is the full ten minutes of beating with eggs and sugar until the mixture is pale and holds a ribbon.
- SkimmerThe flat perforated skimmer is being used as a folding tool. A large rubber spatula does the same job. Fold the flour in, then the melted butter, in a few decisive strokes each.
- Butter temperatureMelt the butter and let it cool to barely warm. Hot butter deflates the egg foam and gives a dense, greasy layer at the bottom of the pan.
- Pan and paper"A small pastry pan" is not specified further; a shallow square or rectangular tin that gives a thin sheet, suited to cutting into twelve fingers, is the likely intent. Buttered parchment replaces the buttered paper.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, usually in the Middle Eastern or baking aisle. It is potent; one teaspoon in this quantity of batter is assertive but correct.
- Glace a l'orangeThe original sentence is garbled and the reading uncertain: the glaze is warmed, sieved orange marmalade brushed over the surface, and 'glace a l'orange' may denote a thin orange icing laid over it once the marmalade has set. Brush while the cake is still slightly warm so the marmalade spreads thin.
- Pastry grating and yieldA wire cooling rack. Twelve pieces from one small sheet means small fingers, served on a folded napkin as a teatime cake rather than a dessert plate.
The name points to Commercy, the town in Lorraine that has long claimed the madeleine as its own; the story generally told is that a servant named Madeleine baked them for the exiled Polish king Stanislas Leszczynski, whose court was at Luneville, and that the recipe was later sold and made into a commercial speciality of the town. That tradition is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere firmly, but Commercy madeleines packed in oval wooden boxes were a genuine railway-station commerce by the nineteenth century. What is interesting about this version is that it is not the fluted shell at all: it is the same butter-and-whole-egg sponge baked flat, glazed with marmalade and pistachio and cut into fingers, which is how a professional kitchen of the period turned a regional biscuit into a plated petit four. Filippini's book collects this sort of hotel-kitchen adaptation from across Europe, which is why a Lorraine specialty arrives with French pastry-room vocabulary intact.