Home › Village Receipts › Kisses
Kisses
Two cups of light brown sugar, one-half cup water; boil until it hairs, and pour over the beaten white of one egg; beat until stiff enough to drop from spoon on buttered paper. Flavor to suit taste.
— Miss Elsie L. Ruffer
This is an Italian-meringue candy rather than a baked meringue: hot syrup is beaten into egg white, and the drops set by drying rather than in the oven. The syrup temperature is the whole recipe.
- "Boil until it hairs"Old manuals use "hair" or "thread" for the stage at which a spoon lifted from the syrup trails a fine thread, generally put at around 230-240F on a modern thermometer, though period usage varied and some writers placed "hair" higher than thread. Below the mark the kisses may not set; much above it and the mixture stiffens too fast to drop from the spoon.
- One white to two cups of sugarThat is a very syrup-heavy ratio by modern standards and will tend to give a dense rather than a light kiss. A second white would make a fluffier drop with the same quantity of syrup, if that is what you are after.
- Adding the syrupBeat the white to soft peaks first, then pour the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running. Poured all at once onto a still white it will cook it into threads.
- Light brown sugarPeriod light brown sugar was less uniformly refined than today's, but modern light brown works directly. Do not substitute dark brown unless you want a pronounced molasses note, which will bury any flavoring.
- Buttered paperParchment or a silicone mat needs no butter and releases better. Buttered paper was one of the usual non-stick surfaces of the period; drops set straight on a bare tin are hard to lift without breaking.
- FlavoringVanilla, lemon, rose or a little cinnamon all suit; add it after the beating, once the mixture has stopped steaming, or the volatile oils go off with the heat. Chopped nuts or coconut can be folded in at the same point.
- Drying and humidityThe drops firm up at room temperature in a few hours, faster in dry air. On a humid day they stay tacky no matter how long you wait; a 200F oven with the door ajar for 20-30 minutes will dry the surface.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; expect several dozen teaspoon-sized kisses. Store airtight with wax paper between layers, since they will absorb moisture and turn tacky within a day or two in the open.
"Kisses" was a broad nineteenth-century American name for any small sweet dropped in a peak on paper, covering everything from baked meringues to boiled-sugar candies like this one, and it predates the wrapped chocolate that later took the word over. The use of brown rather than refined sugar suits a household sweet, though by the late nineteenth century white granulated sugar was itself cheap and widely used. Recipes of this kind turn up in community-compiled books like this one under a contributor's name -- a technique confectioners knew as Italian meringue, reaching cooks who had no thermometer and only the phrase "until it hairs" to go on.