Name: Almond Macaroon Cream
Ingredients: 1 pound macaroons; 1 pint milk; 1 quart thick cream; vanilla extract to taste

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Almond Macaroon Cream

Ingredients

1 pound macaroons
1 pint milk
1 quart thick cream
vanilla extract to taste

Directions

Dissolve the macaroons in the milk.
Strain the mixture through a sieve.
Add the thick cream and vanilla extract, mix well, and serve.

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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroons: Provide the almond flavour and sweetness, and thicken the cream as they dissolve.
Thick cream: Adds richness and a silky, fat-based body to the finished dish.
Milk: Dissolves the macaroons and thins the mixture to a pourable consistency.

“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.