Skip to main content
Dessert

Meringués with Strawberry Cream

Meringues topped with strawberry cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Meringués with Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 200°F (95°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the meringues

  1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (95°C).

  2. Whip egg whites until soft peaks form.

  3. Gradually add sugar, continuing to whip until stiff peaks form.

  4. Fold in vanilla extract.

  5. Pipe meringue onto a baking sheet and bake for 1.5 hours.

Make the strawberry cream and serve

  1. Whip heavy cream until soft peaks form.

  2. Fold in sliced strawberries.

  3. Serve meringues topped with strawberry cream.

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 + 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. Vanilla + creamtop 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 a foam that gives the meringue its airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Stabilizes the whipped foam and helps it hold stiff peaks while sweetening the meringue.
Heavy cream
Whipped into a soft, rich topping that adds moisture and fat.
Strawberries
Add fruity acidity and sweetness to the cream topping.

The step that matters

Gradually add sugar, continuing to whip until stiff peaks form.. Adding sugar slowly lets it dissolve into the egg white foam, producing a stable, glossy meringue. Dumping it in at once can deflate the foam and leave it grainy or weepy.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes