Meringues
whites of 3 eggs 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract Beat whites of eggs until stiff and dry; add gradually two-thirds of sugar, and continue beating until mixture holds shape; fold in remaining sugar sifted with baking powder; add vanilla. Drop by spoonfuls on unglazed paper and bake in moderate oven 25 to 30 minutes. Remove any soft part from center of meringues and return to oven to dry out, after turning off heat. Use two meringues for each serving and put together with sweetened whipped cream and crushed raspberries or strawberries.
These are also delicious filled with fruit ice cream.
A hard meringue shell, sandwiched with cream and berries. The one number here that modern practice has firmly overturned is the oven temperature.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" generally meant somewhere around 350F, which will brown and crack meringues long before they dry through. Bake at 250-275F for about an hour, then leave them in the switched-off oven to finish drying, which is the intent behind the recipe's final step.
- The baking powderThree teaspoons of baking powder in an egg-white foam is not standard meringue practice; the recipe calls for the brand by name, and the book is Royal Baking Powder promotional literature, which is the likely reason it is here. Meringues made without it are generally more stable and keep better.
- Unglazed paperUse parchment paper. "Unglazed paper" means plain unwaxed paper laid on the sheet; the point is a surface the meringue will release from, and parchment does it more reliably.
- Beat "stiff and dry"Take the whites to firm peaks, not past them. Whites beaten literally dry break into grainy clumps and refuse to take sugar smoothly. A copper or scrupulously clean stainless bowl and room-temperature whites help; any trace of yolk or fat will keep them from mounting.
- Sugar in two stagesThe two-thirds beaten in should be added a spoonful at a time and worked until the mixture no longer feels gritty between finger and thumb. The final third is folded, not beaten, so it dissolves during baking rather than deflating the foam.
- Hollowing the shellsScooping the soft center out while the shells are still warm and returning them to the cooling oven is what makes them dry all the way through and gives a cavity for the filling. Skip it and the centers stay tacky and collapse under whipped cream.
- Yield and assemblyThree whites give roughly twelve to sixteen spoonful-sized shells, so six to eight sandwiched servings. Fill only just before serving; cream and crushed fruit soften the shells within about half an hour.
- StorageUnfilled shells keep a week in an airtight tin, but only if fully dry. In humid weather they draw moisture from the air and go leathery; a spell in a 200F oven crisps them again.
Meringue as a sweetened egg-white foam appears in European cookery by the late seventeenth century, and the name is traditionally, if not documentably, linked to the Swiss town of Meiringen. What is interesting about this version is where it sits: The New Royal Cook Book was issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company as promotional literature, and here the product finds a place in a recipe where a chemical leavener has no classical business. The three teaspoons folded into these whites are an advertisement as much as an ingredient. The serving suggestion is two shells joined with whipped cream and crushed berries.