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Dessert

Almond Macaboons

Almond Macaboon is a sweet almond confection made with sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, lemon, egg whites, yolks, and water, baked into small balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Macaboons

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds in boiling water until the skins slip off.

  2. Remove the skins and pound the almonds in a marble mortar with a few drops of egg white until a paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Mix the sugar with a little grated lemon and combine it with the almond paste and egg whites.

  2. Form the mixture into balls the size of a wine glass.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the water and glaze the tops of each ball.

  4. Flatten the balls to 1/4 inch thick and bake at 300°F (150°C) 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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Form the bulk of the paste, giving the cookies their body and nutty almond flavor.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharper, more intense almond aroma to the paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps the surface brown during baking.
Egg whites
Bind the almond paste together so the balls hold their shape.
Egg yolks
Mixed with water to make a glaze that gives the tops a golden browning.

The step that matters

Flatten the balls to 1/4 inch thick. Thickness controls how the cookies bake. Balls that are too thick may stay raw inside while the outside over-browns, so keep the flattened pieces even in thickness.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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