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Dessert

Italian Meringues

A sweet dessert made from boiled sugar, whipped egg whites, lemon juice, and optional liqueur, shaped and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Italian Meringues

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meringue

  1. Boil the sugar until it reaches the boil degree, then place the sugar boiler in a bowl of cold water.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and frothy.

  3. Gradually mix the boiled sugar with the whipped egg whites using the back of a spoon, ensuring even consistency.

  4. Add the lemon juice and liqueur, mixing thoroughly but gently.

Shape and dry

  1. Shape the meringue into small forms using a biscuit forcer.

  2. To color, add a few drops of cochineal for pink, saffron for yellow, or chocolate for brown.

  3. Dry the meringues in the oven at a low temperature, ensuring it does not color a piece of white paper.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Boiled to a syrup, it sets the structure of the meringue and sweetens it.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the meringue its airy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity, which helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the boiled sugar with the whipped egg whites. Adding hot syrup too quickly or unevenly can deflate the foam or leave it lumpy. Pouring it in a steady stream while mixing keeps the foam stable and the texture even.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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