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Dessert

Macaroons Flavored with Lemon

Lemon-flavored macaroons made with egg yolks, sugar, flour, and lemon peel, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroons Flavored with Lemon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 1 pound of powdered sugar until light.

  2. Whisk the whites of 4 eggs to a stiff froth.

  3. Mix in the grated peel of 1 lemon and ½ teaspoon of grated nutmeg.

  4. Gradually fold in the frothed egg whites and 6 ounces of flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls and rub with butter.

  2. Place them on a buttered paper, leaving space between each.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while sweetening it.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the macaroons a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whisked to a stiff froth, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides structure so the macaroons hold their shape while baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the whisked whites' air intact. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving dense macaroons that spread less evenly and rise less in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, flour, 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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