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Dessert

Dry Meringues

Dry meringues are light, airy confections made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until firm.

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

  3. Spoon the mixture onto sheets of paper in the shape of half a large egg.

Bake and finish

  1. Dust the meringues with sifted sugar.

  2. Remove excess sugar from the meringues.

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

  4. Remove the meringues from the paper.

  5. Create a hollow in the center of each meringue with the back of a spoon.

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

  7. Fill the hollow 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 into a foam that traps air and sets into the crisp, light structure of the meringue.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten it and stabilise the structure as it dries.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until firm.. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap enough air. Under-whipped whites produce flat, dense meringues, and any trace of fat or yolk will stop them from foaming properly.

“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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