French macarons, also known as macarons (/maekrn/ MAK—RON, French: [maka] (listen),) are a type of sweet meringue-primarily based delicacy created with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond flour, and food coloring.
Queen Catherine de Medici’s Italian chef is credited with bringing the macaron to Renaissance-era France. Since the eighteenth century, conventional Parisian-style macarons in Singapore have been available with a ganache, buttercream, or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies. The sweet has a flat bottom, a ruffled circle known as the crown or foot (or pied), and a clean, squared top. It’s moist enough to easily melt in the mouth and has a moderate flavor. Macarons can be found in a wide variety of flavors, from the more common (such raspberry and chocolate) to the more out-of-the-ordinary (foie gras, matcha)
Both “macaron” and “macaroon” can be used, however the former is more common, and the “coconut macaroon” is typically emphasized when the latter is used. To distinguish between the two, most North American bakeries use the French spelling of macaron for the meringue-primarily based product. Daniel Jurafsky, a linguist at Stanford University, explains how these two sweets share a history with macaroni (Italian maccheroni, from Greek ). Jurafsky points out that the French words and phrases ending in “-on” that were adopted into English throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are generally spelt with “-oon” (for example: balloon, cartoon, platoon). [6] In the United Kingdom, “macaroon” is still often used by several bakeries.
During their 827 conquest of Sicily, Arab forces from Ifrqiya (modern-day Tunisia) introduced new methods (papermaking) and ingredients (lemons, rice, and pistachios), as reported by Dan Jurafsky in Slate magazine. These included numerous nut-primarily based chocolates like Fldhaj and Lausinaj, which are baked delicacies filled with macaron class in singapore almond cream. The Sassanid Shahs of Iran, who popularized the almond cake to celebrate the Zoroastrian New Year, are credited with perpetuating this sweet tradition (Nouruz). Almond-paste pastries called marzapane and caliscioni developed from fldhaj and lausinaj in Sicily (also in Toledo, Spain, another point of contact between Muslim and Christian culture). Noodle production was first carried out in Sicily in 1154, after Muhammad al-Idrisi advocated for it. Maccarruni is an Arab term for a variety of foods made from ground grain, including noodles and pastries. Macarons trace their ancestry back to the Italian dish maccheroni, which the Italians stole from Maccarruni. [9]
According to Larousse Gastronomique (1988), macarons can be traced all the way back to an eighth-century French monastery in Cormery (791). At the same time, the encyclopedia entry propagates the religious myth that a monk’s empty navel inspired the shape of the pastry with the fractured crust. [10]
A Swiss online encyclopedia in the records of baking, nevertheless, places the first almond cookies in the eleventh century, below the aegis of the sultan and first monarch of the Almoravid dynasty Yusuf ibn Tashfin, where the almond cake Ghouryeba or Ghriba changed into served specially throughout Ramadan. The name “macarone” became commonly used to describe high-quality cookies after the spread of almond biscuits from Arabia to Sicily and beyond to Venice. [11] [12]
Image from Albert Seigneurie’s Dictionnaire encyclopédique de l’épicerie and des industries annexes (1904, L’Épicier) on page 431.
The monasteries of Venice have been making macarons since the seventh century. In 1533, after marrying Henry II of France, Catherine de’ Medici brought her Italian pastry chefs and their creations with her to France. [12] [13] In 1791, a monastery close to Cormery became the birthplace of the macaron, as stated by Larousse Gastronomique. Macarons first gained popularity in 1792 when Carmelite sisters seeking refuge in Nancy during the French Revolution prepared and sold the pastries to support themselves. Macaron Sisters is a nickname for these nuns. There was a time when macarons were given without any sort of special flavoring or filling.