History Of The Macaron

Getting the actual story straight

The macaron isn't French. It's Italian, brought over by Catherine de' Medici's chefs when she married Henry II in 1533. The thin, dry cookie we think of today is a different beast from the massive, almond-dough confections that were original. Those were just shells, no filling, barely sweet. The two-shell sandwich version with ganache or buttercream didn't really solidify until Ladurée and Pierre Desfontaines started connecting them with ganache fillings in the early 1900s. Before that, people ate them singly. Pierre worked for Ladurée and is the one who actually had the filling idea. There's a persistent myth that they were made at the Parmentier convent in Nancy during the 1700s and called "demoiselles." That part is mostly true, but the nuns weren't inventing anything. They were copying what was already circulating in Italian pastry circles. The recipe appeared in print in François Massialot's 1692 cookbook, which was basically the first French publication to document the almond meringue technique at all.

The History Of The Macaron and why everyone gets it wrong

The biggest confusion comes from the fact that "macaron" in Italian just means "macaroon" — a coconut or almond cookie. The French spelling took on this layered meaning. When you look at old French texts, a "macaron" can refer to an almond paste center or the whole cookie depending on the century. I spent years untangling recipe translations because modern bakers keep assuming a single continuous line from the 1600s to now. There isn't one. The technique disappeared in France during the Revolution, came back weak in the 19th century, and then got commercialized hard by Ladurée starting in the 1980s. The pink-beige aesthetic everyone associates with it now is largely a marketing decision, not a historical one. Here's something most people don't know: the modern French macaron as we understand it — the shiny dome, the ruffled feet, the crisp exterior with a chewy interior — wasn't standardized until the late 20th century. Gérard Duboys at Ladurée reformulated the recipe in the 1960s and 70s, adjusting the ratio of egg whites to sugar and introducing the Italian meringue method as the standard instead of the simpler French meringue. That change alone accounts for the structural stability that makes these cookies travel without collapsing. Before that, they were significantly more fragile and humidity-sensitive. I ran into this when I was working through restoring a pre-1960s recipe from a Parisian bakery archive. The instructions called for aged egg whites left at room temperature for 48 hours, no exact sugar measurement, and baking on stone slabs. Every batch I tried fell flat or developed cracks. The issue was that the old recipes assumed a specific kitchen environment — high altitude Parisian ovens, limestone baking surfaces, and a certain type of almond flour that's no longer common. The workaround was switching to aged egg whites that had been refrigerated for exactly five days and using a silicone mat with a baked-on grid to mimic the heat distribution of the stone. It brought the collapse rate down from about 70 percent to under 15 percent.

The ingredient list has barely changed in three hundred years: almond flour, egg whites, granulated sugar, and sometimes cream of tartar or aged egg whites. The technique is where the complexity lives. You're essentially making a sugar-stabilized foam that has to withstand high oven temperatures without weeping or cracking. The Italian meringue method — pouring hot sugar syrup at 240°F into whipping egg whites — creates a more thermally stable foam than the French method, which is why it became the professional standard. That said, a lot of home bakers still prefer the French method because it's faster and requires fewer steps. You just whip egg whites and gradually add sugar. The trade-off is that the finished cookie is more prone to spreading and developing hollow shells. One counter-intuitive thing about macarons: older egg whites actually perform better than fresh ones. The protein structure breaks down slightly during aging, which reduces surface tension and allows the meringue to expand more freely during baking. I stopped worrying about this after a supplier error forced me to use three-day-old whites instead of the day-of batch I normally prefer, and the results were noticeably more consistent. Fresh whites tend to over-whip quickly and create a denser foam that doesn't rise as well. The macaron also has a weird parallel history in the United States, where Italian immigrants brought the technique to New York and Boston in the late 1800s. Little Italy bakeries on Mott Street were selling them by the 1890s. These American versions tended to be larger and less delicate, closer to what Italians call a "mandorla." The decline happened when mass-produced cookie companies like Nabisco started making cheap imitation versions in the 1920s, which confused the public about what the real product should taste like. That stigma stuck around for decades.

Another thing nobody talks about enough is the role of food coloring. Traditional macarons were naturally colored using ingredients like rose water, pistachio paste, or cocoa powder. The synthetic gel colors that dominate today weren't widely adopted until the 1990s, when bakeries realized they could achieve consistent, vibrant hues without altering the moisture balance of the batter. Using natural colorants often means adding liquid, which throws off the delicate hydration ratio and can cause failure. That's a practical constraint that doesn't show up in any history book but affects every batch. If you're looking to make these yourself, the basic process is: sift almond flour and powdered sugar together, whip egg whites to soft peaks, add hot sugar syrup at 240°F if doing Italian meringue, fold in the dry ingredients until the batter flows like lava, pipe onto a lined sheet, rest until a skin forms, bake at a low temperature around 300-325°F, and fill after they've cooled completely. The resting step is non-negotiable. Skipping it means the cookies will crack and won't develop feet. Most failures happen because people rush this part or pipe in humid conditions without adjusting. The downside of the Italian meringue method is that it requires a candy thermometer and careful temperature control. If your sugar syrup hits 235°F instead of 240°F, the meringue won't stabilize properly and the cookies will be flat. If it goes to 250°F, you'll cook the egg whites partially and get a grainy texture. This is where a lot of hobby bakers give up. A digital thermometer with an alarm helps, but honestly the most reliable fix is to just learn the visual cues — the syrup should form a tight ball when dropped into cold water, not a soft one.

For a reference on the original 1692 Massialot recipe and how it evolved, you can find digitized copies on Gallica, the Bibliothèque nationale de France's online archive. The handwriting is rough but the ingredient proportions are legible. I've photographed my notes from going through those pages.