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Dessert

Meringues

Meringues are sweet, airy cakes made from whipped egg whites and sugar, baked until crisp, then filled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Meringues

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Meringues

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Quickly stir in the sugar with a wooden spoon.

  4. Prepare thin wooden boards and cut strips of paper two inches wide.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the paper on the board and drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture, shaping them like eggs.

  2. Keep the meringues two inches apart and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes, removing them as they begin to color.

  4. Gently turn the paper with meringues onto a table and scoop out the soft part with a small spoon.

  5. Turn the meringues upside down on clean paper and return to the oven to harden and brown the other side.

Serve

  1. To serve, fill the meringues with whipped cream flavored with liqueur and vanilla, and join two together.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they form the airy foam that gives meringues their structure.
Sugar
Stabilises the whipped egg white foam and sweetens the meringue as it dries and browns.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling that softens the crisp meringue shells.

The step that matters

Folding in the sugar. Sugar must be added quickly and gently to stiff egg whites. Overmixing or letting the foam deflate causes it to lose volume, so the meringues spread and bake flat and dense.

“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 meringues recipes

Italian 23Cream 9Apple 8Dry 7Spanish 4Egg-Shaped 3 See all 42 →

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