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What food did Marcel Proust taste in real life before changing it into a madeleine in his novel?

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Portrait of French author Marcel Proust, seated with his hand resting thoughtfully against his chin, wearing a dark suit and looking directly at the camera. — Marcel Proust French author Marcel Proust wrote what is considered one of the supreme achievements of modern fiction, the seven-part autobiographical novel *À la recherche du temps perdu* (1913–27; *In Search of Lost Time*).

In real life, the food Marcel Proust tasted that triggered the involuntary memory later immortalized in his novel was a rusk—a type of twice-baked bread—dipped in tea. While this experience served as the catalyst for his literary exploration of memory, he chose to transform the rusk into a madeleine within the narrative of his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.1