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Meringues Seches

Dry meringues made from beaten egg whites and sugar, baked until crisp.

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 ↓

Meringues Seches

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.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat egg whites until very firm.

  2. Gradually add sugar, one tablespoon per egg white, and mix until well combined.

Shape and dust

  1. Prepare thick boards and cut 2-inch wide strips of paper.

  2. Spoon the meringue mixture onto the paper.

  3. Shape them like halved eggs of equal size.

  4. Place the paper strips on a board.

  5. Sift additional sugar over the meringues.

  6. Gently blow off excess sugar.

Bake and hollow

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until they begin to color.

  2. Remove from the oven.

  3. Gently turn the meringues onto a table.

  4. Scoop out a little from the center with a small spoon.

  5. Turn the meringues upside down onto clean paper.

  6. Return to the oven to bake the soft part.

Store and serve

  1. Store in a dry place until ready to serve.

  2. Fill with cream or a tart filling 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 gives the meringues their airy structure and crisp set.
Sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and adds sweetness, helping the meringues brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until dry. Meringue is dried in a low oven rather than baked hot, so it sets crisp without browning too much. Underbaking leaves it soft and sticky, while overbaking can make it taste bitter or brown.

“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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