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Dessert

Meringue, a LA Tarisienne

A layered meringue dessert with a pastry base and two meringue circles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Meringue, a LA Tarisienne

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 the pastry

  1. Roll out the offlee-paste thinly and cover a tin vegetable cutter about 1.25 inches in diameter, sealing the join with egg.

  2. Place the cutter on a buttered baking sheet.

  3. Roll out the remaining paste to ⅛ inch thick and cut two circles, one 6 inches and the other 4 inches in diameter.

  4. Place the circles on a buttered baking sheet, egg wash them, prick with a fork, and bake at 300°F (150°C) until light in color.

  5. Once cooled, trim the edges of the baked pieces to be even and smooth.

Make the meringue and assemble

  1. Whip the egg whites to a firm froth and gradually mix in the finely-sifted sugar.

  2. Attach the base of the pillar to the center of the larger circle using a mixture of egg white and fine sugar.

  3. Attach the smaller circle on top of the pillar in the same manner, ensuring it is straight.

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

Offlee-paste
Forms the baked crisp pastry base and pillar pieces that hold the structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that sets in the oven, and mixed with sugar as an adhesive.
Finely-sifted sugar
Sweetens the meringue and stabilizes the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to a firm froth. Egg whites must be whipped to a firm foam with no trace of fat or yolk, because the foam's air bubbles provide the structure that sets and holds the meringue together.

“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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