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Dessert

Chocolate Macaroons

Chocolate macaroons made from ground almonds, sugar, chocolate, 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 vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chocolate 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.

Make and shape

  1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl to form a stiff paste.

  2. Shape the mixture into short fingers on a sheet of wafer.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Ground almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavour that forms the body of the macaroon.
Egg whites
Bind the paste and help the macaroons set structure as they bake.
Grated french chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the paste.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it hold together as it dries.

The step that matters

Mixing to a stiff paste. If the paste is too wet, the shaped fingers will spread and lose their form in the oven. Mixing until stiff gives the shapes enough body to hold their outline while the egg whites set during baking.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, 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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