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Dessert

Almond Macaroons

Almond macaroons are sweet biscuits made from almond paste, egg whites, rice flour, sugar, and wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Almond 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and mix

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine almond paste, egg whites, rice flour, sugar, and wheat flour. Mix until well combined and a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Scoop small portions of the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly golden.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Almond + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Almond paste
Supplies almond flavour and chewy moisture from its oils and sugar.
Egg whites
Bind the dough and set with heat to give the cookies their structure.
Rice flour
Adds structure with little gluten, giving a tender, slightly sandy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps the surface brown during baking.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten for structure, helping the cookies hold their shape.

The step that matters

Baking until lightly golden. Sugar and proteins brown quickly in the oven. Baking past lightly golden dries the macaroons and makes them hard rather than tender.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits less well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, rice, flour, sugar, wheat. 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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