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Dessert

Pistachio Macaroons

A sweet biscuit made with bitter almonds, sugar, pistachios, vanilla sugar, and 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 pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio Macaroons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pound the bitter almonds with the egg whites until thoroughly pulverized.

  3. Mix the remaining ingredients with the almond mixture in a bowl.

Shape and bake

  1. Fill a biscuit forcer with the mixture and form round balls the size of walnuts.

  2. Place the macaroons on sheet-wafer lined baking sheets.

  3. Bake in the oven until lightly colored.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pistachio + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Bitter almonds
Provide the main nutty base and bulk of the macaroon dough.
Sifted sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the macaroons set and brown in the oven.
Pistachio kernels
Add flavor, color and texture to the macaroon mixture.
Egg whites
Bind the ground almonds into a dough and give the macaroons structure.

The step that matters

Baking until lightly colored. Sugar and proteins brown quickly, so the macaroons can turn dark or dry if left too long. Pull them when only lightly colored to keep them moist inside.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Hazelnutfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiothe original
  4. Macadamia nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, vanilla, 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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