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Meringues or Kisses

Meringues or Kisses are small meringue cakes filled with whipped cream and optionally flavored with liquor or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Meringues or Kisses

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the meringue

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Quickly stir in the sugar with a wooden spoon.

  4. Prepare boards in the oven to prevent meringues from browning too much.

  5. Cut strips of paper about 2 inches wide and place them on the boards.

  6. Drop a tablespoon of the mixture onto the paper, shaping it like an egg and spacing them 2 inches apart.

  7. Sprinkle sifted sugar over the meringues.

  8. Bake for 30 minutes, removing them as soon as they begin to color.

Hollow and dry

  1. Gently turn the paper with meringues onto a table and remove the soft part of each meringue with a small spoon.

  2. Place clean paper on the board, turn the meringues upside down, and return them to the oven to harden and brown the other side.

Fill and serve

  1. When ready to serve, fill the meringues with whipped cream flavored with liquor or vanilla and sweetened with pounded sugar.

  2. Join two meringues together and pile them high on a dish.

  3. For variation, sprinkle with chopped almonds or currants before adding sugar, and garnish with bright-colored preserves.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

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 stiff foam that gives the meringue its airy structure.
Sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and adds sweetness and a crisp, glossy texture when baked.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness to the hollow meringue shells as a filling.

The step that matters

Bake for 30 minutes, removing them as soon as they begin to color. Low oven heat dries the meringue slowly; if it browns too far it turns bitter and loses its crisp, delicate texture. Removing them at first color keeps them pale and crisp.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream, vanilla):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

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