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Dessert

Macarons d’Espagne

A Spanish almond macaron made with sweet and bitter almonds, powdered sugar, orange flower water, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Macarons d’Espagne

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Grind the sweet and bitter almonds with enough orange flower water to form a paste.

  2. Incorporate the powdered sugar into the almond paste using a mortar and pestle.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and fold in the whipped egg whites until well combined.

  2. Spoon the mixture onto a baking sheet in long shapes.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  4. Once out of the oven, brush lightly with royal icing.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body of the almond paste and its nutty flavor.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, aromatic almond flavor to the paste.
Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, giving the mixture lightness and structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it blend into a smooth, workable mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Overmixing deflates them, which leaves the cookies dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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