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Dessert

Hickory Nut Macaroons

A sweet treat made with hickory nuts, sugar, flour, egg, and optional baking powder, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Hickory 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.

Prepare

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

Mix the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped hickory nuts and light brown sugar.

  2. Rub in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake until lightly golden.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Hickory nut kernels
Provide the main flavor and a chewy, nutty body to the cookie.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel note that helps browning.
All-purpose flour
Gives the mixture structure so the drops hold together while baking.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps hold it together as it sets.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly golden. At a low oven temperature, the macaroons dry out and set slowly. Pulling them when lightly golden keeps them chewy rather than hard and overbaked.

“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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