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Dessert

Italian Macaroons

Italian Macaroons are almond-based confections made with sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, and egg whites, baked until lightly colored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Italian Macaroons

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 the almonds

  1. Scald, skin, wash, and dry the almonds.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the almonds thoroughly, gradually adding the egg whites.

  2. Work in the sugar to form a firm paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Fill a macaroon or biscuit forcer with the paste and pipe out small balls onto wafer paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Moisten your finger with water and gently touch the surface of each macaroon.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly colored.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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 flavor of the macaroons.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper almond aroma to the paste.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it firm up into a workable mixture.
Egg whites
Bind the ground almonds into a paste and help the macaroons hold their shape.

The step that matters

Working in the sugar to form a firm paste. If the paste is too wet or too loose, the piped balls spread in the oven instead of holding their shape. Pounding the almonds thoroughly and adding the sugar gradually helps achieve a firm, even texture.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

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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