Ritz Paris, François Perret · Since 2016
The Ritz madeleine
François Perret’s madeleine at the Ritz is a large, humped, golden shell served warm in a silver dish in the Salon Proust, with a honey and vanilla batter that made the simplest French cake a palace emblem.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A lime-blossom tea, as Proust did, or a Ritz blend Earl Grey.
Proust wrote the madeleine into literature in the room next door, so the Ritz had little choice. Perret’s version is bigger than the Commercy original, with a pronounced hump, a crisp edge and a centre kept soft with honey from the hotel’s hives and vanilla. It arrives warm in a silver dish with a cloth, and the Comptoir sells a boxed version with a chocolate-dipped edge.
The madeleine became the emblem of the Ritz’s reopening and of Perret’s idea of pastry: the childhood cake rebuilt by a palace brigade. The house has since made an ice cream, a tea and a candle of it.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 130 g sugar
- 30 g honey
- 150 g flour
- 8 g baking powder
- 150 g butter, melted and cooled
- 1 vanilla pod
- Zest of half a lemon
Method
- Whisk eggs, sugar and honey until pale; add the vanilla seeds and lemon zest.
- Fold in the flour and baking powder, then the melted butter.
- Rest the batter overnight in the fridge: this makes the hump.
- Butter and flour a madeleine tin, fill three-quarters, chill the filled tin for 30 minutes.
- Bake at 220 °C for 4 minutes, drop to 180 °C and bake 6 to 8 minutes more until the hump rises and the edges are golden. Eat warm.
Where to taste it
