Faith in a fragile mouthful

It always strikes me as nonsense of the highest order when people say everything happens for a reason. Just as often, things happen for no discernible reason, or they simply don’t happen at all. But when you are given a 12-piece madeleine tin for a present on a Monday, and handed a beautifully printed commemorative Elizabeth David recipe for madeleines on a Tuesday (on paper made from algae that would otherwise be clogging the Venetian lagoon), you can be forgiven for thinking the gods are enjoying pleasant sport.

No other cake has the faultless literary pedigree of the madeleine, of course. There are highly desirable sensual sweetmeats in Keats’s “The Eve of St Agnes”; there is poor Miss Havisham’s ruined wedding cake; there is the pitiful gateau in the 1950s section of The Hours; there are Sir Toby’s birth-right cakes and ale in Twelfth Night; there are “vanity cakes” in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood novels; but all these baked goods are mere trifles compared with Proust’s small cake and the involuntary memory it provokes.

And what dignity the madeleine possesses! Madeleines will never cost you 600 calories; they will never cause you embarrassment; they won’t ever be tarred with that excruciating epithet “yummy-mummy”, as is the case with their flashy city cousin (thrice-removed), the cupcake; they are modest confections, but their un-iced surfaces betray a certain high confidence, for I’ve always believed the desire and need for icing is linked to a lack of self-belief on behalf of the baker, the consumer and the cake. It’s true that when associated solely with Marcel Proust’s oeuvre, madeleines may represent something of a cliché, but once a nod has been made to this association it can be airily cast aside. It’s not something to hold against them.

And when you pair this utterly blameless confection with Elizabeth David’s irreproachable prose style, you have the perfect marriage. The simplicity, sincerity, delicacy, and austere luxury of the cake finds faultless expression in David’s beguiling plain style with its exquisite good sense and high moral authority. This is quite a heady mix.

In fact, reading David’s recipe for madeleines, a few lines of Bertolt Brecht even sprang to mind: “And I always thought: the very simplest words/ Must be enough. When I say what things are like/ Everyone’s heart must betorn to shreds.”

Take the seventh paragraph of the recipe: “Each mould should be half-filled, no more. This is the only difficult moment in the cooking of madeleines – difficult because it is so hard to believe that the little spoonful of the mixture lying rather sadly in the mould will rise, swell, and take on the beautiful shape and markings of the shell mould. Faith is essential; should the moulds be overfilled, the mixture will spread sideways, the result will be a failure.”

. . .

The explanation is lovingly delivered. There is a light commanding tone, but also a pleasing permissive note. All life’s dilemmas and dramas are suddenly spread before you. David’s exhortation to caution reminds me of a slightly older acquaintance warning you off an unsuitable man while knowing that you won’t necessarily take her word for it because hearts simply aren’t built that way. We all have to make our own mistakes in life. You can’t be wise for other people, for experience has shown us we will all be won over, on occasion, by unsuitable fellows, we will all overfill our madeleine tins at least once and feel rueful about it, but we will recover and walk on with courage renewed and better (batter) insight and instincts for the future.

And the word “faith” is terribly daring, for in what or whom is the writer asking that we pledge our troth? The narrative seems to suggest, bashfully, that it is the rightness of recipes or the facts of kitchen lore we must obey, but not a bit of it; it is Elizabeth David, the patron saint of good taste herself, we must believe in, and we do, we do.

After reading the madeleine recipe, I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that David had written novels. These might have resembled the works of Elizabeths Bowen and Taylor but with a Mediterranean slant, more complex psychology, and better dinners.

So I took my 4oz of plain flour, sprinkled in a teaspoonful of baking powder and a pinch of salt. I added four oz of sugar and the grated zest of half a lemon (leave it out if you prefer to adhere to tradition). I separated two eggs and added the yolks. I added two teaspoons of orange flower water. I stirred 4oz of highly softened butter into the mixture and painted the moulds with the pastry brush dipped in butter. Then I whisked the egg whites to stiff snow and folded them swiftly into the cake batter. I filled the moulds in the restrained way the recipe suggests and baked them for 14 minutes at 425ºF (about 200ºC in a fan-assisted oven).

What fragile little mouthfuls they were.

susie.boyt@ft.com

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