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Dessert

Chocolate Meringue

A sweet baked confection made with almonds, chocolate, crackers, lemon, spices, sugar, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the mixture

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

  2. Chop the almonds and sweet chocolate finely.

  3. In a bowl, combine the almonds, chocolate, rolled crackers, lemon juice and rind, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, powdered sugar, and eggs, then mix well and add the baking powder.

Bake and finish

  1. Spread the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake until light brown.

  3. Once baked, spread fruit jelly and frosting on top.

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 add structure as they set in the oven.
Almonds
Provide the main body and nutty texture of the base.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture bake to a tender, light brown surface.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the mixture rises and lightens.
Sweet chocolate
Adds richness and a deep, sweet flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Baking only until light brown keeps the eggs set but tender. Overbaking dries the mixture and makes it brittle, while underbaking leaves it soft and wet in the centre.

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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