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Dessert

Chocolate Macaroons

A sweet treat made from cocoa, powdered sugar, egg whites, and optional flour, baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate Macaroons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely scrape down 1 lb of prepared cocoa.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Lightly grease the bottom of oblong tin pans with sweet oil or butter.

Make and bake

  1. Gradually mix in 1 lb of powdered sugar and the cocoa, adding a little sifted flour if the mixture is too thin.

  2. Form the mixture into small, thick cakes and place them in the pan, leaving space between each.

  3. Bake for a few minutes until set, then sift sugar over them while warm.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Cocoa + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the macaroons lightness and a structure that holds the batter together.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the whipped whites, helping the cakes set with a fine crumb.
Prepared cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and dark colour and adds bulk to the batter.
Sifted flour
Stiffens the mixture if it is too thin, adding structure to the cakes.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing in the sugar and cocoa. Folding dry ingredients into whipped egg whites too quickly or too vigorously deflates the foam, so the cakes spread thin and lose their lift. Adding them slowly keeps the air bubbles intact.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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