I invented the cornbread madeleine. It is my claim to culinary fame. Someone else may have invented it somewhere else but I invented it in Music City. I ate my first madeleine as a senior in high school when I first read Proust. Madeleine’s appear in two out of three of my novels. I love the idea of taste evoking memory. One of the tastes that evokes the most memory for me is cornbread. When I was a girl every morning my grandfather, Pawpaw, made skillet of cornbread for the family’s breakfast. I invented my version of the classic shell-shaped cake in honor of my grandfather’s cornbread. For years it was something I only ate privately. For my Pushkin and the Queen of Spades launch party I decided to share my cornbread madeleines and have served them at public feasts ever after.