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Macarons Noisettes Scapini

Hazelnut macarons made with hazelnut paste, sugar, icing sugar, egg whites, and cooked sugar or apricot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Noisettes Scapini

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 batter

  1. Grind the hazelnuts until they form a paste.

  2. Mix in the sugar and icing sugar.

  3. Add the raw egg whites and let the mixture rest covered for 2 days.

  4. Before piping, add the cooked sugar or apricot.

Pipe and bake

  1. Pipe onto parchment paper in the size of small cookies.

  2. Bake on a double tray, covered with a damp cloth, in a gentle oven (300°F/150°C).

Finish

  1. Once baked, pair them with fondant mixed with apricot.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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 main nutty flavour and the bulk of the dry structure of the shells.
Egg whites
Provide the protein structure that holds the batter together and helps the shells rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the shells a crisp, glossy crust.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine texture to the batter.
Cooked sugar
Adds moisture and body to the batter, helping it hold its shape before baking.

The step that matters

Resting the batter for 2 days. Resting lets the egg whites and sugars dry slightly, forming a skin on the shells. This skin helps them rise evenly and form feet rather than cracking or spreading during baking.

Swap the hazelnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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