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Meringue
Beat 4 egg whites until stiff and dry. Beat in gradually 1/3 cup powdered sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt and 1/2 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Remove egg beater and fold in 1/3 cup powdered sugar. Put on pie, making rough with a spoon, or using pastry bag and rose tube, and bake 12 minutes at 350 degrees F.
A standard soft meringue for topping a pie, from an era when the terminology for sugar was less settled than it is now. Two details in the wording are worth pausing over.
- "Powdered sugar"In American books of this period the term often means what we would now call superfine or caster sugar rather than the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold today. Either will work here, but superfine dissolves more cleanly and gives less chance of a gritty or weeping topping.
- "Stiff and dry"Modern practice stops at firm, glossy peaks. Whites beaten genuinely dry have begun to break down, and sugar folded into them will not hold; the meringue leaks and shrinks in the oven. Beat to the point where the peak stands but the surface still shines.
- Beat in, then fold inThe split addition is the hinge of the recipe. The first third of the sugar is beaten in to build and stabilise the foam; the second third is folded so the volume survives. Do not combine the two steps.
- Sealing the edgeSpread the meringue so it touches the pastry rim all the way round. Meringue that floats free of the crust pulls away and slides as it cools.
- Warm fillingPut the meringue on while the pie filling is still hot. Twelve minutes at 350F browns the surface but does very little for the underside, and a cold filling leaves a wet layer between the two.
- Oven and colour350F is accurate as written. Watch it from about ten minutes; the difference between pale gold and scorched tips is under a minute with a piped surface.
- YieldFour whites will generally cover one 9-inch pie with a well-peaked top, or more thinly a 10-inch; the recipe itself specifies no pan size.
- CoolingCool away from drafts and let the pie cool fully before refrigerating; beads of syrup may otherwise form on the surface.
The name is French, and the dish is traditionally traced to the Swiss town of Meiringen, though that attribution cannot be documented and the technique of drying sweetened beaten whites appears in European cookery well before it. The flat oven number here reflects the thermostatically controlled oven rather than the older instruction to use a slow oven or the falling heat after bread.