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Dessert

Cocoanut Macaroons

A sweet treat made from egg whites, sugar, and grated coconut, baked into small balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Cocoanut Macaroons

Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cocoanut Macaroons

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Add the sugar and grated coconut, and beat until stiff enough to form balls.

Shape and bake

  1. Wet your fingers with cold water and shape the mixture into balls the size of a nutmeg.

  2. Place on greased parchment paper and bake for 45 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

  3. Egg + coconuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the macaroons their light structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the macaroons and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Grated coconut
Provides the main flavor and a chewy texture, while adding moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Beat until stiff enough to form balls. Stiffly beaten egg whites hold air that lifts the mixture. If it is under-beaten, the balls will flatten and spread on the pan instead of baking up and keeping their shape.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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