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Dessert

Meringues À LA Cuillère

Meringues à la cuillère are light, spoon-shaped meringues made with sugar, egg whites, and vanilla, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Meringues À LA Cuillère

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and egg whites over low heat.

  2. Stir until the mixture is firm.

Shape and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture onto buttered and floured baking sheets.

  2. Tap the sheets to flatten the meringues.

  3. Bake in a low oven until set.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the foam, giving a crisp, dry texture after baking.
Egg whites
Provide the structure, which heat sets into a light, crisp meringue.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture is firm.. Heating sugar with egg whites while stirring thickens and stabilises the foam. If it is underheated, the meringues may stay soft and weep; if it is overheated, the proteins can scramble, so the mixture should be stirred steadily and only until firm.

“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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