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North Carolina Kisses
3 egg whites, beaten stiff 8 tablespoons sugar 1/4 lb. pecans, chopped 1 teaspoon vanilla Sift the sugar gradually into the stiffly beaten egg whites, beating constantly until the mixture will cling to the bowl when turned upside down. Add pecans a few at a time, then flavoring. Line a pan with ungreased paper, or spread paper on a damp board. Drop the mixture by spoonfuls on the paper. Bake slowly in a moderate oven (325 degrees F.), leaving door open until kisses are dryed out-about 45 minutes. Lift meringues from the paper with a knife. If they do not come off easily, dampen the paper slightly on the under side and you will have no difficulty removing them. If these are kept in a closely covered can, they may be kept almost indefinitely. Fill with ice cream, or any other cream filling, such as raspberry cream.
A plain pecan meringue, worked entirely by proportion: three whites, half a cup of sugar, a quarter pound of nuts. The hinge is drying rather than baking, which is why the oven door stays ajar.
- Sugar quantityEight tablespoons is half a cup, about 100 g. That is a lower sugar-to-white ratio than most modern meringue recipes, so the mixture will be softer and less glossy; beat it until it genuinely holds before adding nuts.
- The oven325F is what the recipe itself calls moderate, but with the door propped open the actual cavity temperature will sit appreciably below that. Wedge the door with something heatproof, such as a wooden spoon handle, and treat the stated temperature as nominal rather than as what the meringues are actually seeing.
- Why the door stays openThe open door lets moisture escape and keeps the effective heat down, so the meringues dry through rather than colour and crack on the surface. That slow drying is what the long 45 minutes is for.
- DonenessForty-five minutes is a guide, not a rule. They are done when the underside is dry and the meringue lifts cleanly; if the centre is still tacky, turn the oven off and leave them in the cooling oven another half hour.
- Paper'Ungreased paper' means plain paper left unbuttered, not the silicone-coated parchment sold today. Modern baking parchment or a silicone mat releases better, and the trick of dampening the underside is then usually unnecessary.
- Adding the pecansFold them in by hand, not with the beater. Chopped nuts carry oil, and oil deflates whipped whites, so work quickly and stop as soon as they are distributed.
- Storage and filling"Almost indefinitely" holds only in a genuinely airtight tin in a dry room; in humid weather they go soft quickly. Fill with ice cream or whipped cream close to serving, since a moist filling will soften the shell.
- YieldThree whites should give something on the order of two dozen spoonful-sized kisses, or fewer and larger shells if you are hollowing them for ice cream.
"Kisses" was a common American name for a small baked meringue through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, well established before Hershey's chocolate Kisses of the early 1900s made the word mean a moulded sweet. Pecans made the Southern version: the nut is native to the Mississippi valley and adjoining regions, and was an abundant and inexpensive Southern ingredient, so a nut meringue built on three whites and half a cup of sugar was an economical way to finish a meal. The instruction to leave the oven door open is a way of managing heat by managing airflow, though the recipe's own "325 degrees F." shows the cook was expected to have a thermometer or dial as well.