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Meringues and Preserve

Meringues filled with preserve or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Meringues and Preserve

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pound and sift the sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  3. Gently fold the sugar into the egg whites using a wooden spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture onto stiff white paper in the shape of eggs.

  2. Dust pounded sugar thickly over the meringues and let them rest for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove any excess sugar or powder.

  4. Place the meringues on baking sheets and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until crisp and lightly colored.

  5. Turn the meringues over and remove the paper.

Finish and serve

  1. Use a spoon dipped in hot water to hollow out the centers.

  2. Let the meringues dry and fill with preserve or whipped cream when ready to serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and, when folded in, helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the meringue its airy structure and crisp set after baking.

The step that matters

Folding the sugar into the egg whites. Overmixing or stirring vigorously collapses the air bubbles in the whipped whites, so the meringues bake flat and dense instead of light and crisp.

“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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