MONITOR:WHAT IS IT about macaroons? Ever since, the venerable Parisian institution Ladurée set up a carriage inside the Grafton Street entrance to Brown Thomas, sales have rocketed. At the company's Royale shop, there are queues every day, as Parisians queue up for a box of perfection. Now we Dubliners are doing it, too.
About 40,000 of us in the first three weeks, in fact. As Brown Thomas’s Nigel Blow explains, expectation has been exceeded to such an extent that a full-blown Ladurée section is due to open in the shop by the end of September. Added to the macaroons will be chocolates, marshmallows, champagne, crystalised violets and ice cream.
Essentially almonds, eggs and sugar with a ganache filling, each macaroon is flavoured and coloured according to . . . According to what, exactly? Glance at the Ladurée website and you would be forgiven for thinking there is a small team of dedicated chefs busy in the back room of every Ladurée outlet fashioning raspberry, blackcurrant, violet and bergamot macaroons to order.
Clearly this is not the case. Macaroons are more robust than you might think. Ladurée says it allows each morsel two days of resting so the flavours can mature, and then sends them on their way via the shops (four in Paris, two in London, one in Monaco, two in Switzerland, one in Tokyo and now Dublin).
John Collins, the man responsible for bringing Ladurée to Ireland, points out how obsessive the company is about ingredients. Stand in the ingredients room in the purpose-built factory in Monte Carlo, and it is hard to leave, he says. Everything smells divine. Ladurée macaroons are handmade and only use fresh ingredients.
One macaroon does not taste like another. They may look similar, but all is in the eating. The texture is crucial – an eggshell-like feel but more delicate. The interior must have a marshmallow quality.
Then there is the flavour. Clear, precise, bright and elegant is what you are looking for. For some, caramel is the key test flavour, for others something fruity. Macaroons have taken on something of the fashion circuit’s appetite for the new, with different seasonal flavours along with the main range. All of which will be available in Dublin.
Ladurée is not the only maker of good macaroons, but it has a certain global domination. Lesser macaroons can be far from handmade, often utilise all manner of flavourings, and may be designed to stay looking their best far longer than the all-natural approach. A macaroon is best eaten slightly chilled. If you buy from Ladurée, they have a shelf-life of five days. If they last that long.