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Dessert

Meringues or Kisses

Meringues or kisses are light, airy cakes made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, baked until hard and hollow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Meringues or Kisses

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and flaky.

  2. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until thick.

  3. Drop tablespoonfuls onto buttered paper on a board.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes or until hard and hollow to the touch.

  2. Once cool, remove the soft part and fill with ice cream, sherbet, or whipped cream.

  3. Put two meringues together or drop from a teaspoon in any shape for kisses.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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, airy structure of the meringue.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and sweetens the meringue, giving it a firm, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Baking until hard and hollow. Meringue is baked at low heat so it dries and sets rather than browning. Underbaked meringue stays soft and sticky inside, while the low oven keeps it crisp and hollow.

“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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