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Dessert

Oatmeal Macaroons

A baked oat-based sweet treat made with butter, sugar, eggs, oats, salt, baking powder, and vanilla.

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 and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs, oats, salt, baking powder, and vanilla extract; mix well.

  3. Drop tiny spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking pans.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden, then remove from the oven immediately.

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. Butter + eggtop 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set in the oven.
Rolled oats
Provide the chewy bulk that gives the macaroons their texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cookies taste tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the spoonfuls so they rise slightly.

The step that matters

Remove from the oven immediately once golden. Baked sugar and egg proteins keep cooking from residual heat, so leaving them in longer can over-brown and dry the macaroons.

“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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