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Dessert

Strawberry Meringue

A sponge cake topped with strawberries and meringue, baked briefly and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a sponge cake in a jelly cake pan.

  2. Remove the cake while it is warm.

  3. Press the cake, top side down, into a dinner plate to shape it hollow.

Fill and top

  1. Mix the sugar with the strawberries in a bowl.

  2. Spread the strawberries on the cake.

  3. Whip the egg whites until firm.

  4. Mix the sugar into the egg whites.

  5. Spread the meringue over the berries.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake with the oven door open for about 5 minutes, or until lightly colored.

  2. Serve cold.

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

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

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 sets into the meringue topping and browns lightly in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the berries and stabilises the whipped egg whites into a glossy meringue.
Strawberries
Add moisture, fruity sweetness and acidity to the layer under the meringue.
Sponge cake
Provides a light, airy base that holds the berries and meringue.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until firm. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks without any fat or yolk present, because stable foam gives the meringue its structure; under-whipped or greasy whites will deflate and weep during baking.

“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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