Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Macaroons - ‘mousse’
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the mold
Prepare a domed mold filled with pounded salted ice.
Assemble
Whip the cream until well drained and sweeten to taste.
Layer the whipped cream and macaroons soaked in kirsch in the mold.
Seal the mold with common paste and cover the lid with coarse sea salt.
Add a thick layer of salted ice on top.
Unmold
After 1 hour and 15 minutes, dip the mold in tepid water and turn the mousse out onto a folded napkin.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Whipped cream
- Provides the light, airy body of the mousse once it is well drained and chilled.
- Macaroons
- Soak up kirsch and add texture and almond-like flavour between the cream layers.
- Kirsch
- Adds aroma and flavour to the soaked macaroons.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the whipped cream to taste.
The step that matters
Turning the mousse out of the mold. Dipping briefly in tepid water loosens the frozen surface from the mold without melting the mousse. Water that is too hot would soften the outside before the shape holds.
“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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