In Memoriam Marcel Proust

“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, … the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds….”

Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust, who died November 18, 1922, in Paris.

A.J. Liebling Quote of the Day

“Larousse defines [a madeleine] as ‘a light cake made with sugar, flour, lemon juice, brandy, and eggs.’ (The quantity of brandy in a madeleine would not furnish a gnat with an alcohol rub.) In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sautéed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he might have written a masterpiece.”

--Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris