Name: Almond Macaroons
Ingredients: ½ pound sweet almonds; 1 coffee cup white sugar; 2 egg whites

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

½ pound sweet almonds
1 coffee cup white sugar
2 egg whites

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

Blanch the almonds and pound them into a paste.
Add the sugar and beaten egg whites to the almond paste.
Work the mixture together with the back of a spoon.

Shape and bake

Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a nutmeg.
Dust sugar over the top of each ball.
Lay them on a sheet of paper at least an inch apart.
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.

Almond + coffeetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together374 recipes

Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).
Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 main body and nutty flavour of the macaroons.
White sugar: Sweetens the mixture and helps the tops brown during baking.
Egg whites: Bind the almond paste and give the macaroons structure and a light, chewy set.