Macaron

From three ingredients, almonds, sugar and egg whites, come both single baked rounds with cracked surfaces and confections made of two smooth shells sandwiching a filling. Macaron is a collective name for French baked confections that come in a variety of shapes and textures. The Parisian macaron widely known today sandwiches ganache or cream, but in the regions of France there are also single rounds sold attached to paper, as well as ring shapes. Shape and texture change not only with the thickness of the baked batter but also with how the nuts are ground, the moisture content, and how the meringue is folded in.

Two-shell macarons lined up in a box. A filling is visible between the shells. Photo: AlphaLemur, 2020-10-06, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source, with no additional processing.

Macaronage: Adjusting the Batter for Two-Shell Macarons

Almond flour and powdered sugar are combined with meringue, piped into circles of equal size and baked. The hallmarks are a smooth top and a ruffle around the base called the pied. Because two shells are joined with their flat sides facing inward, the shells are made the same size.

In macaronage, the process of mixing the dry ingredients with the meringue, the aim is not to keep the foam completely intact but to bring the batter to a fluidity at which the peak of each piped round settles naturally. In the recipe (recette, meaning the ingredient proportions and method) from King Arthur Baking School, the batter is mixed until it turns glossy, flows in a ribbon when lifted and dropped, and the trail melts back into the surrounding batter. If the batter is too stiff, pointed piping marks remain.

Conversely, overmixing makes the batter too runny, and the piped circles spread. In a home recipe from the baking supply retailer cotta, the sugar for the meringue is added in three portions according to the state of the foam, and the final batter is adjusted until it falls slowly in a ribbon.

The French method, which whips raw egg whites with sugar, and the Italian method, which pours hot sugar syrup into the egg whites, differ in the order in which the sugar is added and in how the foam is made. The school has recipes for both. A mixture of equal amounts of almond flour and powdered sugar is called tant pour tant. It is these two powders that are used in equal amounts. Because egg whites and, depending on the method, sugar syrup or other ingredients are also added to the batter, the overall formula of the batter varies even among macarons that use tant pour tant.

Drying Before Baking and Letting Flavors Meld After Filling

In King Arthur Baking School’s French method, the piped shells are dried for roughly 30 minutes or more, until the surface no longer sticks to a finger. Depending on the humidity, this may take 2 hours or more; the purpose is to form a skin on the surface. The baked shells are cooled completely before being sandwiched with ganache, buttercream, jam or a similar filling. The shells may be colored, and acidity or bitterness may be added to the cream, jam or other filling.

In the school’s recipe, the macarons are refrigerated for 24–48 hours after filling. During that time, the shells soften slightly and their flavor melds with the filling. Before baking, the surface is dried to form a skin; after baking and filling, the macarons are left in the refrigerator to bring the texture into balance.

A Name Related to Macaroni, and Competing Theories of Its Origin

The French word macaron was borrowed, with a change in meaning, from the southern Italian word maccarone, and in the 16th century it referred to a small round almond confection. The definition of the Académie française still describes a round or oval shape made from almonds, egg whites and sugar, with a lightly cracked surface.

Linguist Dan Jurafsky explains how related words came to be used both for flour noodles and for almond confections. For older origins, several theories compete, including an Arabic name for a confection, a Greek funeral porridge and an Italian dialect word meaning “to crush,” and there is no established view. Although the name is closely related in origin to macaroni, no known history says that the two-shell confection developed from the noodle.

Grinding Nuts with Flower Water or Egg Whites

The 17th-century English recipe that Jurafsky contrasts has almonds ground with rosewater, then sugar, egg whites and musk added; the mixture is baked on wafer paper and dried again in a cooled oven. In 1651, La Varenne moistened the almonds with egg whites instead of flower water. The two differ in the liquid added during grinding and in how aroma is imparted.

Carême’s cookbook of 1815 also includes a recipe that uses hazelnuts. The hazelnuts are roasted and skinned, cooled, ground with egg whites and combined with sugar, and a small test piece is baked to check how much the batter spreads and how hot the oven is. Besides being rolled with wet hands and placed on paper, some are shaped like olives or decorated with pistachios pressed into them. In this way, even before two-shell macarons became widespread, bakers were adjusting how the nuts were ground, the liquid added, how easily the batter flowed and the degree of baking.

The History of Two-Shell Macarons and Ladurée’s Account of Its Origin

According to an explanation by the French Ministry of Agriculture, macarons with a filling sandwiched between two shells appeared in the 1830s. Ladurée, on the other hand, attributes the idea of its own two-shell macaron to Pierre Desfontaines, a relative of the founder. Two-shell confections of this kind are also called macaron parisien or macaron Gerbet, and they have been made by shops other than Ladurée as well.

The Legend of Their Introduction by Catherine de’ Medici

There is also a legend that when Catherine de’ Medici married the future Henry II in 1533, Italian craftsmen brought with them a recipe of almonds, egg whites and sugar. This story is told as the origin of the single-baked macaron; confections that join two shells around a filling appeared much later, in the 19th century.

Shapes and Textures That Differ Across France

The Nancy macaron has a natural baked color and a cracked top. Marie-Élisabeth Morlot and Marguerite Gaillot, who left their convent after the Revolution, sold them, and they came to be called the “Sœurs Macarons.” The French Ministry of Agriculture dates these sales from 1793, and the shop still sells them by the dozen, attached to paper.

Nancy macarons. Each one is a single baked confection with cracks on its surface. Photo: Shallowell, 2015-12-12, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source, with no additional processing.

Nadia Fermigier in Saint-Émilion likewise sells golden, cracked confections attached to paper and says that she carries on the recipe of the Ursuline nuns. The town also has a tradition that a nun named Boutin had a particularly delicious recipe. The macarons made by Jean Trogneux in Amiens are thick, soft confections made with almonds, sugar, eggs and honey. In these three cities, macarons without a filling, enjoyed for the flavor and texture of the batter itself, have been handed down.

The Cormery macaron is a ring with a hole in the center, and according to legend the hole represents a monk’s navel. It is not clear when it began to be baked in this shape.

The Single-Baked Macaron Handed Down in Saint-Jean-de-Luz

At Maison Adam in the Basque Country, almonds from Valencia, egg whites and sugar are combined and baked as a single round. The lightly colored surface encloses a soft center. Unlike the macaron popularized in Paris, which sandwiches a different flavor between two colored shells, the nut batter itself makes up one whole confection.

The origin story handed down at the shop is the wedding of Louis XIV and the Spanish princess Marie-Thérèse in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1660. It is said that an ancestor of the Adam family delivered the confections to the court and that the queen mother, Anne of Austria, was taken with their delicacy. This Adam family tradition, linked to the royal wedding in the town, is still told today.

This macaron was also called “Paré Gabéa,” which means “the incomparable one” in Basque. The family says that in the shop of earlier days it was served with white wine, and that Russian émigrés, artists and Breton fishermen gathered there. Before it came to be given as a gift in metal tins and boxes as it is today, it was also a confection enjoyed at the shop with white wine.

Two-Shell Macarons Spreading to Switzerland, Japan and Korea

Sprüngli in Switzerland makes the Luxemburgerli, a small two-shell macaron. The company says that a young confectioner from Luxembourg brought the recipe in the 1950s, and it sells versions filled with a variety of creams and ganaches. A limited product that Pierre Hermé Paris sold in Japan flavored its filling with gyokuro, yuzu, sansho and ginger.

Korea’s ttungkaron sandwiches a thick layer of cream, and some shops incorporate flavors such as rice cake and sweet potato. The two-shell structure is shared, but the size of the shells, the amount of filling and the ingredients used for flavoring all differ.

The storefront of Maison des Sœurs Macarons in Nancy. The sign and a window displaying products are visible. Photo: Patrick from Compiègne, France, 2017-05-26, Nancy, France. Original image / CC BY-SA 2.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source, with no additional processing.

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