madeleine
noun
ˌma-də-ˈlān
Did you know?
The Madeleine Goes Back to France
The madeleine is said to have been named after a 19th-century French cook named Madeleine Paumier, but it was the French author Marcel Proust who immortalized the pastry in his 1913 book Swann's Way, the first volume of his seven-part novel Remembrance of Things Past. In that work, a taste of tea-soaked cake evokes a surge of memory and nostalgia. As more and more readers chewed on the profound mnemonic power attributed to a mere morsel of cake, the word madeleine itself became a designation for anything that evokes a memory.
Examples of madeleine in a Sentence
Sabrina Weiss, PEOPLE, 7 Nov. 2025
The technical seems like a fitting challenge for the finale as the bakers are forced to make a tower of madeleines with a white-chocolate (vom) coating.
—Brian Moylan, Vulture, 7 Nov. 2025
This included items like Rosenthal’s equivalent of a Proustian madeleine: the open-faced turkey sandwich.
—Gary Baum, HollywoodReporter, 22 Sep. 2025
With a frill-less monastic setting, this institution has several London locations, but Smithfield is the OG, serving signature dishes like roasted bone marrow and oven-hot madeleines available by the dozen and half dozen.
—Nicole Trilivas, Travel + Leisure, 20 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for madeleine
Cite this Entry
“Madeleine.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/madeleine. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.
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