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Dessert

Ordinary Meringues

Meringues made from egg whites and sugar, baked until light fawn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ordinary Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the meringue

  1. Whisk egg whites in a copper bowl until very stiff and snowy.

  2. Gradually mix in the sugar, incorporating it lightly but thoroughly with a spoon.

Shape the meringues

  1. Cut stout paper into 2-inch wide bands.

  2. Using a tablespoon, scoop the mixture and drop it onto the paper, shaping it like an egg.

  3. Fill the paper with meringues, keeping them 1 inch apart.

  4. Dredge sifted sugar over the meringues and let them sit for 3 minutes.

  5. Shake off excess sugar and place the bands on a wet board.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until light fawn color.

  2. Carefully remove each meringue from the paper.

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 + eggtop 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 stiff foam that traps air and gives the meringues their structure.
Sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and adds sweetness, helping the meringues set and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the sugar. Adding sugar slowly and folding it in thoroughly keeps the foam stable and glossy. Dumping it in too fast can deflate the whipped whites and leave the meringue grainy or weepy.

“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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