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Fannie S Meringue

A puff pastry base topped with sweetmeats and a lemon-flavored meringue, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fannie S Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Line a deep dish with puff pastry and cover it with sweetmeats.

  2. Bake until the pastry is done.

Make the meringue topping and bake

  1. Beat the eggs to a stiff froth with sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Spread the egg mixture over the sweetmeats.

  3. Bake until lightly browned.

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. Egg + sugartop 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

Eggs
Whipped into a foam that holds air, then sets into a light, tender topping when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the topping and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam so it holds its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the beaten egg foam stable.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs to a stiff froth. The foam must be beaten until it holds firm peaks. Under-beaten eggs stay runny and sink into the sweetmeats, while over-beaten eggs turn dry and grainy, and the topping can weep or crack in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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