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Dessert

Macaroon Tart

A tart made with a macaroon paste base, jam, and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Macaroon Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Make a paste with flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.

  2. Roll out part of the paste to ¼ inch thick and spread it in a round shallow cake pan about ½ inch deep.

  3. Bake very slightly until just set.

Add the topping

  1. When cold, spread a thin layer of jam or jelly on top.

  2. Using a piping bag with a star tube, pipe stripes of macaroon paste over the jam.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until nice and brown.

  2. After baking, add icing between the macaroon stripes.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste together as the base.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the base rich and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Almond paste
Forms the macaroon stripes and gives a moist, chewy texture with almond flavor.
Whites of 8 eggs
Whip-free egg whites give the macaroon stripes structure and help them set.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until nice and brown. A low, slow oven dries and sets the macaroon stripes and lets sugars brown gradually, so they colour without scorching or cracking.

“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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