Ladurée
Encyclopedia
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
brand based in :Paris, France. It is known as the inventor of the double-decker macaron
Macaron
A macaron is a sweet confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food coloring. The macaron is commonly filled with buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies. Its name is derived from an Italian word "maccarone" or...
, fifteen thousand of which are sold every day. They are still one of the best known makers of macarons in the world.
History
Louis-Ernest Ladurée, a millerMiller
A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...
, was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day. He founded the bakery on the Rue Royale, Paris
Rue Royale, Paris
The rue Royale is a short street in Paris, France running between the place de la Concorde and the place de la Madeleine...
in 1862. During the Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
uprising of 1871 the bakery was burnt down. A pastry shop was built at the same location and Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret was a French painter and lithographer who became a master of Belle Époque poster art. He has been called the father of the modern poster. -Biography:...
was entrusted with the interior decoration. The chubby cherubs
Cherub
A cherub is a type of spiritual being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and cited later on in the Christian biblical canons, usually associated with the presence of God...
dressed as pastry cooks, painted by him on the ceiling, form the company's emblem. The interior of the premises were painted in the same celadon colour as the façade. Ladurée's rise to fame came in 1930 when his grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, had the original idea of the double-decker, sticking two macaron shells together with a creamy ganache
Ganache
Ganache is a glaze, icing, or filling for pastries made from chocolate and cream.Ganache is normally made by heating cream, then pouring it over chopped dark semi-sweet chocolate...
as filling. Queen Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici was an Italian noblewoman who was Queen consort of France from 1547 until 1559, as the wife of King Henry II of France....
had brought the macaron to France from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in the 16th century, and the recipe for the biscuit had hardly varied over the years, but the amounts of the ingredients used and the appearance of the end product were up to the individual bakers.
Desfontaines also opened a tearoom at the pastry shop. In those days ladies were not admitted to cafés, which were the exclusive domain of men. This was a big success with ladies, who enjoyed meeting in the freedom of the tearoom rather than their homes.
Present
In 1993 the Groupe HolderGroupe Holder
Groupe Holder is French business group founded by Francis Holder in 1962. The group includes companies like Ladurée and PAUL....
took over the firm Ladurée. The Holder family also owns the PAUL bakery chain in France. Following the takeover, the company began an expansion drive, setting up pastry shops and tea rooms on the Champs-Élysées
Champs-Élysées
The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strip of real estate in the world. The name is...
and in Le Printemps Haussmann in 1997, followed by Ladurée Bonaparte in 2002. The International development of Ladurée started in 2005 with London.
Ladurée stores are now also present in Monaco, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, Kuwait, Ireland, and the USA.
Ladurée made the pastries for the film Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (2006 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 2006 biographical film, written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is very loosely based on the life of the Queen consort in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design...
, directed by Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, film director, actress, and producer.In 2003 she received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation, and became the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing...
; its famous macaron
Macaron
A macaron is a sweet confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food coloring. The macaron is commonly filled with buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies. Its name is derived from an Italian word "maccarone" or...
s can be seen in a scene between Marie Antoinette and Ambassador Mercy.
They can also be seen in The CW's hit teen drama Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl is an American young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Little, Brown and Company, a subsidiary of the Hachette Group. The series revolves around the lives and romances of the privileged teenagers at the Constance Billard School for Girls, an elite...
as Blair Waldorf
Blair Waldorf
Blair Cornelia Waldorf is the main character of Gossip Girl, introduced in the original series of novels and also appearing in their television and manga adaptations. Described as "a girl of extremes" by creator Cecily von Ziegesar, she is a comical overachiever who possesses both snobbish and...
's favorite pastries.