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Dessert

Almond Macaroons

Almond macaroons are small sweet cakes made from blanched almonds, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and coffee work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Almond Macaroons

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Blanch the almonds and pound them into a paste.

  2. Add the sugar and beaten egg whites to the almond paste.

  3. Mix everything together with the back of a spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a nutmeg.

  2. Dust sugar over the top of each ball.

  3. Place them on a sheet of paper at least an inch apart.

  4. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until light brown.

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 + coffeetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the bulk of the paste, along with fat and nutty flavour.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown and form a crisp crust.
Egg whites
Bind the almond paste and provide structure so the balls hold their shape.

The step that matters

Baking in a cool oven. Sugar and egg white browning is slow at low heat, so the macaroons dry and set without spreading or scorching. Baking too hot can brown the outside before the inside sets.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, egg. 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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