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Dessert

Almond Macaroons

Almond macaroons are sweet cookies made from blanched almonds, rose water, egg whites, sugar, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Mix the pounded almonds with rose water.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, one teaspoon at a time, while continuing to beat.

  3. Fold in the almond mixture.

  4. If the mixture is too soft, add flour.

  5. Roll out the mixture.

  6. Cut with a small cake cutter.

Bake

  1. Place the cutouts on buttered paper, spaced apart.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes or until hard and dry.

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 + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Blanched almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the macaroon once pounded into a paste.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the mixture its structure and help it set as it bakes.
White granulated sugar
Stabilises the whipped whites and adds sweetness and a crisp, browned surface.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma that flavours the almond paste.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture if it is too soft, helping the cutouts hold their shape.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar while beating the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly lets the whites form a stable, glossy foam. Dumping it in at once can leave the foam weak and runny, which weakens the structure the macaroons depend on.

“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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