The pastel biscuit that's younger than it looks

Here's one that surprised me while I was researching it. Those perfectly matched pastel macarons stacked in a Paris shop window feel like they must be centuries old. The sandwich version, two shells and a filling, actually isn't. It was invented in the 1920s, credited to Pierre Desfontaines at the patisserie Ladurée, barely a hundred years ago.

The plain almond biscuit underneath it all is much older, likely carried into Europe through Arab traders and Italian courts long before France got hold of it. The best documented chapter in its older history isn't royal at all. During the French Revolution, two Carmelite nuns were turned out of their convent in Nancy and baked plain macarons to survive, becoming known there as Les Sœurs Macarons, the Macaron Sisters. Not a queen in sight, just two women getting by.

I painted a little stack of them in watercolour and ink, all those soft pastel shells. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: A Stack of Macarons, Paris · Travel Poster