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Dessert

Macaroon Cake

A baked dessert made from rolled macaroons, confectionery sugar, milk, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Macaroon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the macaroons

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Put the macaroons in the oven to dry, ensuring they don't burn. Once dry, remove and roll them finely.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the confectionery sugar with enough milk to wet it.

  2. Add the rolled macaroons and almond extract to the sugar mixture.

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. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Confectionery sugar
Sweetens and bulks the mixture, forming a thick paste when wetted with milk.
Milk
Moistens the sugar so it binds into a spreadable paste.
Rolled macaroons
Add almond flavour and body, and blend into the sugar paste.
Almond extract
Adds a concentrated almond aroma to the mixture.

The step that matters

Wetting the sugar with milk. Sugar absorbs liquid gradually. Adding milk a little at a time keeps the mixture a stiff paste; too much milk makes it runny and hard to shape.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. 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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