Skip to main content
Dessert

Kisses or Cream Meringues

A light, airy meringue made with egg whites, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kisses or Cream Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gradually add the confectioner's sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Mix in the vanilla extract and arrowroot.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered paper.

  2. Bake with the oven door slightly open, watching closely.

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 + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  5. 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the meringue its structure and volume.
Confectioner's sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten it and help stabilise the structure.
Arrowroot
Starch that helps stabilise the meringue and keeps it from weeping or collapsing.

The step that matters

Baking with the oven door slightly open. Meringue is mostly air held by cooked egg protein and sugar. Too much heat browns or cracks it quickly, while a slightly open door lets moisture escape so it dries and firms rather than turning sticky or collapsing.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

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

More cream meringue recipes

Pudding 9 See all 3 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesArrowroot PuddingArrowroot Pudding46 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes