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Meringue
4 EGG WHITES 4 TABLESPOONS SUGAR Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Add sugar and beat again until sugar is well incorporated. Spread over pie in peaks. Bake 25 minutes at 300°.
A soft meringue topping for an already-baked pie. The proportions are lean by modern standards, which affects both stability and baking behaviour.
- Sugar ratioFour tablespoons of sugar for four whites is about one tablespoon per white. Current practice is two tablespoons per white, which gives a meringue that holds its peaks longer and is much less prone to weeping and beading.
- Add the sugar graduallyRather than adding all four tablespoons at once, sprinkle it in a spoonful at a time while the mixer runs. Rub a little between your fingers before you stop: any grittiness means undissolved sugar, which later leaks out as syrupy droplets.
- "Stiff but not dry"Stop when the peaks bend slightly at the tip and the foam still looks glossy. Once it turns matte and starts to break into curds it has gone too far and will seep liquid in the oven.
- Oven temperature300F is as printed, and it is on the low side; it sets the foam through without scorching the peaks. The recipe gives 25 minutes; check for a pale gold surface.
- Spread it onto a warm fillingMeringue put on a cold filling tends to shrink and pull away, and the underside can stay wet. Top the pie while the filling is still warm and take the meringue right out to touch the crust all the way around, which anchors it as it sets.
- Room-temperature whitesWhites straight from the refrigerator whip more slowly and to less volume. Separate them cold, since the yolks are firmer then, but let the whites stand 20 to 30 minutes before beating.
- A stabiliser helpsAn eighth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar beaten in with the sugar is not in the original but costs nothing and makes the foam markedly more forgiving. Any trace of yolk or grease in the bowl will keep the whites from rising at all.
- YieldFour whites tops one standard 9-inch pie generously. Cut and serve the same day; refrigeration softens baked meringue and makes it sweat.
Soft meringue of this kind — whites and sugar beaten to peaks, browned briefly in a slow oven — is the American pie topping that goes back through nineteenth-century cookery to the French meringue, a word whose origin is genuinely uncertain and often traced, without firm evidence, to the Swiss town of Meiringen. It is distinct from the hard, sugar-heavy meringue dried for hours into shells; the difference lies largely in the ratio of sugar to white, and a lean formula like this one is designed to be eaten soft, in wedges, the day it is made.