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Dessert

Dry Meringues

Dry Meringues are baked egg white and powdered sugar confections, optionally flavored, that are crisp on the outside and hollow inside.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓

Dry Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until firm.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar and essence, mixing well.

Shape and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture onto sheets of paper, shaping them like half of a large egg.

  2. Sift additional sugar over the meringues and gently blow away the excess.

  3. Place the meringues on a thick board to bake, ensuring they only receive heat from the top.

  4. Once they are a fine color, remove them from the paper.

  5. Use the back of a spoon to create a hollow in the center of each meringue.

  6. Return them to the oven to dry the inside.

Serve

  1. Fill the hollows with cream or jelly just 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. Egg + sugartop 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 to form the foam that gives the meringue its structure and airy lightness.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and gives the meringue its sweetness and crisp texture.

The step that matters

Baking at low heat from the top. Baking at a low temperature with heat only from above dries the meringue slowly so it becomes crisp without browning too quickly. Too much heat can cause cracking, browning, or a sticky interior.

“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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