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Dessert

Meringues or Kisses

A light, sweet dessert made from beaten egg whites and sugar, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meringues or Kisses

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add two-thirds of the sugar while beating constantly.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture holds its shape.

  4. Fold in the remaining sugar and add the vanilla.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape with a spoon or pastry bag on a wet board covered with buttered paper.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

Finish

  1. Remove from paper and pair them together, or scoop out the soft part to fill with ice cream or water ice.

  2. Return to the oven to dry.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. 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 whose trapped air gives the meringue its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Stabilizes the foam, sweetens, and helps the meringue dry to a crisp texture.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually while beating. Sugar added slowly while beating constantly dissolves into the whites and helps stabilize the foam. Adding it all at once or stopping too early can leave a weak, unstable foam that collapses or weeps.

“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 meringues recipes

Italian 23Cream 9Apple 8Dry 7Spanish 4Egg-Shaped 3 See all 42 →

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