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Oatmeal Macaroons

Oatmeal macaroons are sweet oat and coconut cookies baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Oatmeal Macaroons

Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Oatmeal 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, gradually add the maple sugar to the well beaten egg and mix well.

  2. Stir in the rolled oats and grated coconut along with the vanilla extract.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a well greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Oats + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Oats + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Oats + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,548 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Binds the oats and coconut together and helps the macaroons hold their shape.
Rolled oats
Provide the bulk and chewy texture of the macaroons.
Maple sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew and a toasty flavour as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough sets the egg and dries the surface so the macaroons hold their shape, while stopping at golden keeps them chewy rather than dry and hard.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Blueberryfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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