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Dessert

Buisson De Meringues

A dessert of meringue shells filled with coffee‑infused whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Buisson De Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 200°F (400°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold in the powdered sugar.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto parchment paper, each the size of an egg, and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Place the meringues on baking sheets and bake at 200°F (93°C) until cooked.

Shape and fill

  1. Remove from paper and hollow out the center of each meringue, leaving a ½ inch thick shell.

  2. Reduce the strong coffee with granulated sugar to make a syrup, then let it cool.

  3. Mix the syrup with well-whipped cream.

  4. Fill the meringues with the cream mixture and arrange them in a bush shape.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 whites
Whipped into a foam that sets into the crisp, hollow meringue structure.
Powdered sugar
Folded in to sweeten and stabilize the meringue so it holds its shape.
Strong coffee
Reduced with sugar to a syrup that flavors the cream filling.
Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the coffee to form a sweet syrup and sweetens the meringue top.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and a soft, rich texture to the crisp meringue shells.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and free of any fat or yolk, because fat prevents foam from forming. A stable foam gives the meringue its airy structure and keeps the shells from collapsing in the oven.

“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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