macaron

Macaron (not to be confused with macaroon, its English cousin) derives from the French macaron, which itself came from the Italian maccarone or maccherone — from the Old Italian ammaccare, meaning 'to crush' or 'to bruise.' The original Italian sense referred to a paste of ground almonds, the crushing process that produced the fine almond powder at the heart of both macaron and maccheroni (pasta). In French, macaron settled onto a specific confection: a small, round cake made from ground almonds, sugar, and egg whites, with a cracked, slightly crunchy exterior and a chewy interior. This simple form dates to at least the sixteenth century in France.

The history of macarons in France is intimately tied to convents and monasteries, where the almond-egg-sugar formula was maintained for centuries. Two nuns, known as the Macaroon Sisters (Sœurs Macarons), are said to have founded the macaron tradition in Nancy during the French Revolution, selling the confections from their convent to earn a living after religious orders were disbanded. The town of Saint-Emilion, Amiens, and Nancy each claim a distinctive regional macaron tradition — and in each location, the historic macaron is a single round disc, not a sandwich.

The double-decker Parisian macaron — two almond meringue shells sandwiching a filling of ganache, buttercream, or jam — is a twentieth-century invention credited to Pierre Desfontaines of Ladurée, who around 1930 began pressing two macaron shells together with chocolate ganache. This format became the Ladurée signature and, eventually, a global luxury confectionery phenomenon. The Parisian macaron (sometimes spelled with the accent, macaron, to distinguish it from the British and American macaroon) became a vehicle for an almost infinite range of flavors: rose, pistachio, salted caramel, violet, yuzu, black truffle.

The word spread globally in the early twenty-first century as the Parisian macaron became a symbol of French pastry culture exported through luxury brand expansion. Ladurée opened shops in Tokyo, New York, London, and Dubai. Pierre Hermé, the macaron's greatest contemporary innovator, built an international reputation on flavor combinations of extraordinary sophistication. The macaron became Instagram's first great food subject — its pastel colors and geometric precision were perfectly photogenic — and the word entered global food vocabulary in its French spelling to distinguish the delicate Parisian sandwich from the denser, coconut-based Anglo-American macaroon.