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Dessert

Chocolate Meringue

A baked chocolate meringue made with almonds, crackers, lemon, spices, powdered sugar, eggs, and topped with fruit jelly and frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chocolate Meringue

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop the almonds and melt the chocolate.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the rolled crackers, lemon juice and rind, spices, powdered sugar, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the melted chocolate and almonds to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the baking powder.

  4. Spread the mixture in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until light brown.

  2. Spread fruit jelly and frosting on top 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and give it structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and turn light in texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the eggs for a smooth mixture.
Sweet chocolate
Adds fat and rich flavor, and gives the batter its chocolate character.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and body, giving the bake some texture.
Rolled crackers
Provide crumbs that absorb moisture and bind the batter into a cake-like base.

The step that matters

Fold in the baking powder. Baking powder must be folded in gently so the air bubbles it releases are not knocked out of the batter. Overmixing deflates the batter, leaving the bake denser and less risen.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, chocolate, cinnamon, clove, allspice, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, chocolate, cinnamon, clove, allspice, sugar, 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.

More chocolate meringue recipes

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