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Dessert

Oatmeal Macaroons

A sweet cookie made with oats, flour, butter, lard, sugar, eggs, raisins, nuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Oatmeal Macaroons

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oatmeal Macaroons

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar, lard, and butter together.

  2. Add the well beaten eggs to the mixture.

  3. In another bowl, mix the flour, oats, raisins, cinnamon, and salt.

  4. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture, then add the baking powder.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Oats + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the cookies brown and hold together.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the macaroons tender and moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and give it structure as the macaroons set in the oven.
Rolled oats
Provide a chewy, hearty texture and bulk to the dough.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the spoonfuls hold their shape while baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the macaroons rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding the baking powder. Baking powder is added last, after the dry and wet mixtures are combined. Mixing it in too long or too early can overwork the batter or lose lift, so the macaroons may turn out dense.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, oats, flour, whisky, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, oats, flour, whisky, cinnamon. 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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