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Strawberry Meringue

A baked meringue flavored with strawberry preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Meringue

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 the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the meringue

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold in the powdered sugar and strawberry preserves.

  3. Pour the mixture into an ungreased pan.

  4. Place the pan in a larger pan lined with paper and fill the larger pan with boiling water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 40 minutes.

  2. Let cool before serving with vanilla sauce.

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 + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + strawberrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 airy structure as it sets.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whites to add sweetness and help stabilize the foam.
Strawberry preserves
Adds fruit sweetness and flavor, and moisture that softens the set texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the preserves. Overmixing or deflating the whipped whites releases the air that gives meringue its lift, so the fold should be gentle and quick.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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

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