from By southfloridaantiquebuyers.com © By southfloridaantiquebuyers.com
French revolution
France has many awards in various fields to be The Best , culinary is no doubt the number one. When it comes to Macaroon boom all over the world, France pops up again as the first. Great Parisian chefs know what's the secret of those fragile, exquisite almond cookies, but for the rest of the world, well they are still trying to figure out the secret ingredient, the writ temperature of egg whites or the way you make them.
Macaroons come in an infinite variety of flavours and an explosion of colours, maybe that's why they're so attractive to all of us, it's considered to be one of the jewels of French patisserie. Green, pink, brown, red, blue, yellow, all those colours are making your eyes go crazy and your taste buds can barely stay calm, looking over the shelves of French patisseries. There are infinite types and colours of this little round biscuit, and you won't stop with one.
The world wide famous Maison Laduree in Paris made the original creature of macaroon back in 1862. That time only three original flavors were made, chocolate, lemon and raspberry, so bright pink, yellow and brown macaroons were out for the world. With years the Maison Laduree continued to surprise its customers with special limited editions every now and then, for the season or some specific events. After there were many followers to come up with the light macaroon wonder, but no one have ever beaten the king of macarons.
However, if we dig deeper in the history of macarons, the French patissiers might invented the macaroons we know now,two shells sandwiched together with a soft cream inside, but the roots more likely come from Italy. Catherine of Medicis back in 16 century imported them in the luggage, that time it was more simple and colourless, it might be that French just spiced it up . The recipe seems very simple, egg whites, sugar and almond flour, but the hardest part is exact proportions and the temperature and the right moves, macaroons should be made with.
Nowadays, every big Paris house produces macaroons in all shapes and colours, and they even say that the real ones can be tasted only in France. Those little puffy biscuits are everywhere in the world now, but their price is still high, 1.50 or even 2 Euros per piece,it's because it has to be hand made, carefully made, there are no machines that can be able to do so fragile job. The imagination of the masterchefs for macaroons have no limits, you will find mango, lemon, raspberry , even savoury with foie gras and truffle. Specially for its beautiful appearance, macaroon has taken a big step abroad, in Europe is the new MUST and the Middle East and Japan start to requesting it rapidly and a lot.