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Dessert

Oatmeal Macaroons

A sweet cookie made with oats, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Oatmeal Macaroons

Why it works: Oats and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,532 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Oatmeal 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs, rolled oats, salt, vanilla, and baking powder to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet, leaving space between each.

  2. Bake until golden 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Oats + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown at the edges.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and give the macaroons structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender texture.
Rolled oats
Provide the bulk and chewy, hearty texture of the macaroons.
Baking powder
Lifts the mixture so the macaroons rise slightly while baking.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking only until golden brown keeps the macaroons moist inside while the edges set and color. Overbaking dries them out and makes them hard, since the sugar and butter continue to firm as they cool.

“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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