madeleine

Meaning

Noun

• A French type of small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.
• Something which brings back a memory; a source of nostalgia or evocative memories.

Origin

• Borrowed from French madeleine, from earlier gâteau à la Madeleine, after the given name Madeleine, of uncertain reference: attributed in some sources to a 19th-century pastry cook lang=fr, whose existence is now considered dubious.
• In sense 2, used with reference to the cake's function in the extract below, taken from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.