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Dessert

Macaroon Cheesecakes

A small cheesecake made with sweet almonds, butter, sugar, egg whites, rice flour, orange flower water, and puff pastry scraps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Macaroon Cheesecakes

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).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry thinly and cut it into rounds.

  3. Line small patty tins with the pastry rounds.

  4. Blanch and pound the almonds.

  5. Mix the almonds with orange flower water.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Add the sugar, rice flour, and almonds to the egg whites.

Bake

  1. Place a teaspoonful of the mixture into each patty case.

  2. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they lighten the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Rice flour
Adds light body so the filling holds its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff so they trap air. Under-whipped or greasy whites will not lighten the mixture, and the filling will bake dense and flat.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, sugar, egg, rice, flour. 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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