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Dessert

Orange-flower Macaroons.

A sweet treat made from sugar, orange blossoms, and egg whites, baked into small cookies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange-flower Macaroons.

Oven, in the book's wordsA quite cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the orange blossoms into small pieces with scissors and mix them quickly into the sugar to prevent discoloration.

  2. Add the egg whites to the sugar and orange blossom mixture, then whisk until it resembles snow.

  3. Drop the mixture onto paper without delay.

  4. Bake in a very cool oven for 20 minutes or more.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Provides sweetness and bulk, and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Egg whites
Whipped to form a foam that gives the macaroons their light, airy structure.
Orange blossoms
Provide the fragrant orange flavour and aroma of the macaroon.

The step that matters

Mix the orange blossoms into the sugar quickly. Orange blossoms discolour when exposed to moisture and air for long, so they should be mixed in quickly. Working without delay also keeps the whipped egg white foam from collapsing before the mixture is dropped and baked.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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