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Dessert

Méringues À LA Portugaise

Meringues à la portugaise are light meringue cookies flavored with cinnamon, vanilla, orange flower water, and crushed praline.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Méringues À LA Portugaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 200°F (93°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the meringue

  1. Mix together the egg whites and powdered sugar until well combined.

  2. Add cinnamon, vanilla extract, orange flower water, and crushed praline to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pipe small meringue shapes onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 200°F (93°C) until dry and crisp.

  3. Let cool before serving.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 whites
Whipped into a foam that sets and gives the meringue its airy, crisp structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and dissolves readily into the egg whites, stabilising the foam.
Crushed praline
Adds sweetness, nutty crunch and caramel flavour to the meringue.

The step that matters

Baking until dry and crisp. Meringue is mostly sugar and air; at low oven heat it dries out rather than browning. Pulling it too early leaves it soft and sticky, while over-baking can cause browning or a bitter taste.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Blueberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cinnamon, 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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