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Dessert

Meringue of Red Currants

A dessert of meringue layered over cooled red currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Meringue of Red Currants

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the currants

  1. Pick and rinse the red currants.

  2. Combine loaf sugar, water, and lemon juice in a saucepan. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the currants into a dish. Let them cool.

Make the meringue

  1. Whisk the egg whites until frothy. Gradually add castor sugar until stiff peaks form.

Bake and serve

  1. Pile the meringue on top of the cooled currants.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 3 to 4 minutes until set and slightly browned.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Red currants
Provide the tart fruit base and most of the juice that flavours the dish.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the light, stable structure of the meringue topping.
Castor sugar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites and helps the meringue set and brown in the oven.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the currants and, cooked into syrup, gives them body and a glossy texture.

The step that matters

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks before adding sugar gradually. Egg whites must be whipped to a stable foam before the sugar is added gradually, so the sugar dissolves and the meringue holds its shape rather than weeping or collapsing in the oven.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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