An Incredible History of the Great French Desserts

1891 was marked by the fact that the famous cycling marathon Paris - Brest - Paris took place for the first time. Charles Terron became the winner. To do this, he had to pedal for 71 hours and 35 minutes without sleep and rest (his closest rival on the third night could not stand it, stopped to sleep, and lost). In honor of such a large-scale event and its winner, after a while, pastry chef Louis Durand, commissioned by Pierre Giffard, the journalist-founder of the event, invented a signature dessert "Paris - Brest" in the form of a bicycle wheel.

From childhood, Saint Honoré did not consider himself worthy of becoming a bishop. Therefore, according to legend, when he refused to fast, immediately a ray of the sun illuminated him, which meant the blessing of God. He could not deny it, and when the news reached his family, his nanny stuck her baking spatula into the ground and confidently declared that she could only believe what had happened if her kitchen utensils immediately bloomed and bear fruit. In an instant, the scapula took the shape of a blackberry bush with flowers and berries on it. So, everyone believed that Honoré had become a saint and that the fame of the conqueror of confectioners, bakers, and all chefs, in general, was entrenched in him.

Today in Paris, there is a street named after the Saint. Tradition says that it was here that the recipe for the name Honore was invented. In the 19th century, the pastry chef Shibust, whose bakery was located on this street, made an amazingly tasty dessert for the first time, to which he gave the name of the Saint in tribute to the guardianship of him and his colleagues.

One of the most emblematic desserts in France was invented by the pastry chef Marie-Antoine Karem - the court chef of George IV and Emperor Alexander I. Perhaps the eclair was created especially for one of them.
The exact date of the appearance of this dessert is unknown, but the peak of its popularity fell in the 19th century. Eclairs began to appear frequently at dinner parties of aristocrats and nobles, kings and emperors.
 

They say that this dessert, a symbol of the city of Bordeaux, was born in the monastery of the Annunciation in Sainte-Eulalie. The nuns made it from flour, which was collected on the embankments when unloading ships, rum, which was brought from distant islands, and yolks left after the clarification of the wine.
According to another version, cannelle was the sacred dessert of the Magi.
However, the high popularity of these fragile cakes led to the fact that a whole category of people from the province of the city of Bordeaux was engaged in the manufacture and sale of this dessert, and they were called nothing more than canoliers. The fame of the dessert was so great in the city. Beyond that, the canoliers were one of the wealthiest people of those times and even established their own corporation, registering it in the Parliament of Bordeaux in 1663.

The most popular version of the iconic Madeleine biscuits' birth is associated with the name of the King of Poland and the last Duke of Lorraine - Stanislaw Leszczynski.

Once, the king was giving dinner at his castle. However, shortly before it began, it turned out that a quarrel had taken place between the chefs, so seriously that the chef responsible for the dessert left the kitchen with a scandal without preparing the dessert. Not bewildered and wanting to save the honor of the king, the maid Madeleine Palmier suggested making cakes according to her grandmother's recipe. The result so that captivated the guests and Leshchinsky himself that the dessert was firmly entrenched in the king's meals, and the new dish was named after her.

However, there is another legend. According to this, the origin and shape of the cookies are associated with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela to the relics of the Apostle Jacob, where the scallop shell served as a holy symbol (in France, it is called Saint-Jacques, literally "Saint Jacob"). According to legend, a maid named Madeleine baked cookies for pilgrims in these scallop shells for those who went to the relics.

Today, Madeleine is often remembered by fans of Michel Proust's artistry, thanks to the already common noun metaphor "Proust's Madeleine," which means nothing more than an object, taste, or smell, causing an influx of memories and a feeling of nostalgia that Proust himself felt about Madeleine's cookies, which he ate as a child.

Louis XV gave France not so many desserts, but the French are passionate about the baba.
When in 1725 Louis XV married the Polish king Stanislav Leszczynski's daughter, - Maria, her confectioner Nikolai Stohrer came with her to Paris. Being enterprising, his work was not limited to the palace kitchen, and soon Stohrer opened his pastry shop on Rue Montorgueil (today the oldest pastry in Paris).

While preparing cakes for the royal court, Nikolai once invented the famous baba au rhum: a brioche bun, with the addition of Malaga wine and saffron, topped with sweet cream, raisins, and fresh grape berries, which to this day is the hallmark of his pastry shop.