madeleine

¹

[mad-l-in, mad-l-eyn, mad^uh-len]

noun

French Cooking.

plural

madeleines 

1. a small shell-shaped cake made of flour, eggs, sugar, and butter and baked in a mold.

2. something that triggers memories or nostalgia: in allusion to a nostalgic passage in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

Madeleine

²

Also Made·laine,

[mad-l-in, -lahyn, mad^uh-len]

noun

1. a female given name, form of Magdalene.

madeleine

/ -ˌleɪn, ˈmædəlɪn /

noun

1. a small fancy sponge cake

Word History and Origins

Origin of madeleine¹

1835–45; < French, earlier gâteau à la Madeleine, after the female given name; the attribution of the recipe to an 18th-century cook named Madeleine Pau(l)mier is unsubstantiated

Word History and Origins

Origin of madeleine¹

C19: perhaps after Madeleine Paulmier, French pastry cook

Example Sentences

On Monday, jurors were told Ms Wandelt repeatedly claimed she was Madeleine and was abducted and transported to Poland.

From BBC

Madeleine's disappearance in 2007 - at the age of three during a family holiday in Portugal - is one of the most widely reported missing child cases and remains unsolved.

From BBC

But after these claims were ruled out by the charity, Ms Wendalt then contacted the charity with a belief she could be Acacia Bishop - a missing baby from Utah in the US - before messaging them about her insistence she was Madeleine McCann.

From BBC

These claims, the court heard, were repeated in 2024 when Ms Wendalt is alleged to have "consistently" messaged Mrs McCann's mobile over the course of a day - calling her "mommy", claiming to recall feeding Madeleine's younger brother Sean, of playing ring a roses in the back garden of the family's home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and of the night Madeleine was abducted.

From BBC

There was a brief break in proceedings when Ms Wandelt started crying and went to the back of the dock, when prosecutor Michael Duck KC said: "Can we, at this very early stage, make this position clear. Julia Wendelt is not Madeleine McCann."

From BBC