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Meringue for Baked Alaska
6 egg whites, beaten stiff 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla Beat the whites of eggs until dry, then gradually fold in sugar. Beat thoroughly after all the sugar is added. Flavor with vanilla extract. The meringue acts as a non-conductor of heat.
A soft meringue meant to be spread over ice cream and browned fast. The proportions are right for that job; almost everything that goes wrong with baked Alaska happens after the meringue is made.
- Seal the edges completelyThe meringue insulates only where it touches. Spread it over the ice cream and the cake base right down to the platter, with no gaps, or heat runs straight in at the seam and the ice cream floods out.
- "Beaten until dry"Period language for stiff, glossy peaks that hold their shape. Taken literally it means overbeaten whites that look curdled and weep syrup; stop while the foam still has a sheen.
- Sugar ratio and textureOne cup of sugar to six whites is roughly equal weights, which gives a soft, marshmallowy meringue rather than a crisp shell. Add it a spoonful at a time and beat until you cannot feel grains between your fingers, or the finished surface will bead with syrup.
- A pinch of acid helpsA quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar stabilises the foam and makes it more forgiving during the several minutes of spreading and shaping. Modern practice takes this for granted; older books often did not.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no baking direction. Baked Alaska is generally browned in a very hot oven, around 450-500F, for a few minutes -- just long enough to colour the peaks. A moderate oven browns too slowly and melts the centre.
- Freeze hard firstThe ice cream and its cake base should go back into the freezer until solid before the meringue goes on, and the assembled dessert can be frozen again before baking. The meringue slows heat transfer, it does not stop it.
- Raw whitesOnly the outer surface of this meringue gets hot; the layer against the ice cream stays cold and essentially uncooked. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites or a cooked Swiss meringue.
- YieldRoughly enough to cover a dessert built on a cake base of about nine inches.
Baked Alaska is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York, where chef Charles Ranhofer served a version he called "Alaska, Florida" not long after the 1867 purchase of Alaska -- the joke being hot and cold on one plate. French kitchens knew the same idea as omelette norvegienne, and the underlying observation, that a whipped egg foam is full of air and conducts heat badly, is often credited to Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.