The history of the macaron
Long before it became the jewel of Parisian pastry cases, the macaron was a humble almond cookie passed between monasteries, royal courts and provincial bakers. Here is how it traveled from medieval Italy to our counter in Oak Park.
Italian beginnings
Most food historians trace the macaron to Italy, where monastery kitchens made simple cookies from ground almonds, sugar and egg whites. The name is thought to come from the Italian maccarone or maccherone, meaning a fine paste — the same root as macaroni.
A royal legend
A favorite story holds that Catherine de' Medici brought the recipe to France when she married the future King Henry II, along with her Florentine pastry cooks. Historians treat the tale as legend rather than fact, but the almond cookie was certainly known in France by the mid-1500s — Rabelais mentions macarons in his writing in 1552.
A provincial treasure
Across France, towns developed their own versions — Nancy, Saint-Émilion, Amiens and Cormery among them. These early macarons were single, unfilled cookies, often rustic and crackled, and many are still baked to their traditional recipes today.
The Macaron Sisters
During the French Revolution, when convents were closed, two nuns in Nancy found refuge with a local family and supported themselves by baking and selling macarons. They became known as les Sœurs Macarons — the Macaron Sisters — and the city still honors them, with a street bearing their name.
The Parisian macaron is born
In Paris, the cookie became the pastry we know today: two smooth shells joined by a creamy filling. The innovation is most often credited to Pierre Desfontaines of the Ladurée pâtisserie family, though other Paris bakers laid claim to the idea too. Either way, the "Gerbet" or Parisian macaron soon became the city's signature.
A worldwide icon
From the late twentieth century, French pâtissiers turned the macaron into a canvas for color and inventive flavor, and it spread to pastry shops around the globe. Here in Oak Park, we bake ours in that tradition — a centuries-old recipe, made fresh for today.
Five hundred years of almonds, sugar and patience — boxed by the ten.
Macaron or macaroon?
Macaron (mah-kah-ROHN)
The French sandwich cookie: two smooth almond-meringue shells with a filling of buttercream, ganache or jam. Light, crisp, colorful — and what we bake at Sugar Fixé.
Macaroon (mack-uh-ROON)
A dense, chewy mound usually made with shredded coconut, sometimes dipped in chocolate. A cousin that shares the same almond-cookie ancestry, but a very different treat.