Skip to main content
Dessert

Meringue Pagodatique a LA Chinoise

A layered meringue pagoda served with vanilla‑flavored whipped cream.

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

Meringue Pagodatique a LA Chinoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meringue

  1. Prepare a meringue mixture with 15 eggs.

  2. Using a paper cornet, pipe six rings on parchment paper: three rings of 8 inches, one of 6.5 inches, one of 5 inches, and one of 3.5 inches in diameter, each 1 inch thick.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the meringue rings until dry and crisp.

  2. Once cooled, stack the rings to form a pagoda shape.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream flavored with vanilla sugar.

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. 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

Eggs
Whipped egg whites trap air and set into a light, crisp meringue structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and stabilizes the whipped foam so it holds its shape.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness that contrast with the dry, crisp meringue.
Vanilla sugar
Adds a sweet vanilla aroma to the whipped cream.

The step that matters

Bake until dry and crisp. Baking slowly drives out moisture so the rings set firm. Rings that are underbaked stay soft and can bend or collapse when stacked, so they should be fully dry and cooled before assembly.

“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