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Macarons Aux Avelines

Hazelnut macarons made from toasted hazelnuts, powdered sugar, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and sugar work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Macarons Aux Avelines

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the hazelnuts

  1. Toast the hazelnuts and remove their skins.

  2. Once cooled, grind the hazelnuts and gradually add the egg white.

Shape and bake

  1. Mix in the powdered sugar until well combined.

  2. Add more egg white as needed to form a soft dough that doesn't spread.

  3. Using a spoon, form 2-centimeter balls and place them 4 centimeters apart on parchment paper.

  4. Lightly dust with sifted sugar.

  5. Bake in a low oven (300°F / 150°C).

  6. Once baked, gently brush the back of each macaron to detach them from the paper.

  7. Let the macarons cool on a wire rack.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Hazelnut + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Hazelnut + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hazelnuts
Provide the ground nut base that gives the macarons their body and nutty flavor.
Egg white
Binds the ground nuts into a dough and adds moisture and structure to the shell.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the shells and helps give them a smooth, fine-textured surface.

The step that matters

Adding egg white to form the dough. Too little egg white leaves the dough crumbly, while too much makes it runny and prevents shells from holding their shape. Add it gradually and stop when the dough is soft but holds its form and does not spread.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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