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Meringue III (Whites eggs cup powdered sugar)
Whites 4 eggs 7/8 cup powdered sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice Put whites of eggs and sugar in bowl, beat mixture until stiff enough to hold its shape, add lemon juice drop by drop, continuing the beating. It will take thirty minutes to beat mixture sufficiently stiff to hold its shape, but when baked it makes a most delicious meringue.
Meringues Glacees, or Kisses White 4 eggs 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar or 1 cup fine granulated 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Beat whites until stiff, add gradually two-thirds of sugar, and continue beating until mixture will hold its shape; feld in remaining sugar, and add flavoring. Shape with a spoon or pastry bag and tube on wet board covered with letter paper. Bake thirty minutes in very slow oven, remove from paper, and put together in pairs, or if intending to fill with whipped cream or ice cream remove soft part with spoon and place meringues in oven to dry.
Two related preparations sit side by side here: a soft meringue for topping pies and cakes, and a hard-baked meringue shell. Both hinge on beating the whites to a stage stiff enough to hold a peak before any acid or flavouring goes in.
- 7/8 cupFourteen tablespoons, or one cup less two tablespoons. Roughly 100 g of modern confectioners' sugar, nearer 175 g if measured as superfine granulated.
- Powdered sugar then and nowPeriod "powdered sugar" was a fine-milled sugar closer to today's caster or superfine sugar, with no added starch. Modern confectioners' sugar carries a few percent cornstarch, which can dull the gloss and leave a faint chalkiness; superfine granulated dissolves cleanly and is the better substitute in both versions.
- Thirty minutes of beatingThat figure assumes a hand whisk or a rotary egg beater. A stand mixer on medium-high reaches the same stiff, glossy stage in five to eight minutes. Beating for half an hour by machine will break the foam down into something grainy and weeping.
- Add the lemon juice slowlyThe drop-by-drop instruction is not fussiness. Acid stabilises the foam, but added in a rush it thins the whites and can collapse what you have built. About 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar beaten in at the start will stabilise similarly, though it will not supply the lemon flavour.
- "Very slow oven"For the baked kisses, roughly 225-250F, and lower still (about 200F) if you are drying rather than baking. Thirty minutes will dry small shells; larger ones want an hour or more, then the oven turned off and the door left ajar so they cool without cracking.
- Letter paper on a wet boardPlain writing paper on a dampened wooden board was the period release surface. Use parchment on a sheet pan; the shells lift off without the water trick.
- Folding in the last sugarThe final third goes in by folding, not beating. Whisking it through deflates the foam and the shells spread rather than holding their piped shape.
- YieldFour whites give enough soft meringue to cover a 9-inch pie generously, or roughly 18 to 24 small kisses, that is 9 to 12 filled pairs.
- HumidityMeringue shells draw moisture from the air. On a damp day they turn tacky within hours, so bake them the day they are wanted and store airtight.