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Dessert

Hazel Nut Macaroons

A sweet treat made from beaten egg whites, lemon juice, powdered sugar, hazelnuts, almonds, and a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 186 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hazel Nut 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar, mixing well.

  3. Reserve ½ cup of the mixture.

  4. Fold grated hazelnuts and grated almonds into the remaining mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered pans, creating a small indentation in each.

  2. Fill the indentations with the reserved icing.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Lemon + hazelnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together205 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 foam that gives the macaroons their light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps bind it into a soft, chewy paste.
Grated hazelnuts
Add nutty flavour and body to the batter.
Grated almonds
Add texture and body to the batter, along with a mild nutty flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Folding in the nuts. Overmixing knocks air out of the stiffly beaten egg whites, so the macaroons spread flat and turn dense. Fold gently, just until the nuts are evenly combined.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, hazelnut, almond, 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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