Most people know of Proust’s madeleines, even if they’ve never read the first 100 pages of In Search of Lost Time. Those little cakes, dipped in tea, brought Marcel back to the days of his youth at his Aunt Léonie’s home. In Proust’s day, there was likely only one kind of madeleine to be found in the boulangeries of Paris and the provinces: the blond variety, with a familiar lemon or orange scent and a tender crumb. These days, one can find just about every kind of madeleine imaginable: chocolate, almond, pecan, hazelnut, matcha. There are unadorned madeleines and glazed madeleines—quelle horreur! After learning firsthand how to make them from the excellent cookbook author and teacher Lydie Marshall, I can turn out a batch of classic madeleines at the drop of a chapeau. But for me, the madeleines that stand head and shoulders above the rest will always be the very unorthodox date madeleines that could only be found, until sometime in 1985, at the venerable tearoom on Manhattan’s East 37th Street, between Fifth and Madison, named Mary Elizabeth’s.