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Dessert

Hazelnut Cookies

A simple cookie made with egg whites, hazelnuts, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and sugar work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Hazelnut Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix in the chopped hazelnuts and granulated sugar until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Using a teaspoon, form small mounds of the mixture.

  2. Place the mounds on a greased upside-down bread tin.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until light brown.

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. Hazelnut + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + hazelnuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the cookies their light, airy structure.
Chopped hazelnuts
Provide bulk, nutty flavour and a crisp, toasty texture when baked.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Under-whipped whites leave the mixture dense and flat, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and collapse, so the cookies lose their light texture.

Swap the hazelnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutthe 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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