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Chocolate Meringue Puffs
There is nothing of the kind choicer or more fragile than these. Only a slight change in the ingredients from the foregoing varieties. 1 pound of granulated sugar. 6 whites of eggs. 3 ounces of grated common chocolate--a heaping cupful 3 drops of acetic acid. 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla extract.
Beat up the icing as directed for meringue puffs, using 6 whites instead of 8, and when it is finished mix in the chocolate thoroughly. Drop round portions with the sack and tube on baking pans and bake at a very gentle heat. These rise rounded like a mushroom, and nearly hollow. They slip from the pans easily when cold.
A high-sugar meringue stiffened with acid and loaded with unsweetened chocolate, piped and dried rather than truly baked. The heat is the whole game.
- "A very gentle heat"The book gives no number. The usual reading is a very low oven of the kind used for drying meringues rather than baking them; if the oven runs hot the sugar browns and the shells crack. Timing will depend on the oven and the size of the mounds, and they can be left in the cooling oven to finish drying.
- "Common chocolate"In American books of this period this usually means plain unsweetened cake chocolate rather than sweetened eating chocolate or cocoa powder. Use 3 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, grated fine so it does not weigh down the foam.
- Acetic acidThree drops of the concentrated acid sold at drugstores served as the stabiliser. Substitute ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar beaten in with the whites, or ½ teaspoon white vinegar; the acid keeps the whites from weeping under all that sugar.
- The sugar ratio1 lb granulated sugar (about 2 1/4 cups) to 6 whites (roughly 6-7 oz) is far sweeter than a French meringue and is difficult to bring up cold. The recipe simply sends you back to the book's earlier meringue-puff method, scaled from 8 whites to 6; follow whatever that method directs.
- "The sack and tube"A piping bag with a plain round tip, about ½ inch. Pipe straight down and pull up sharply for the mushroom dome; leave an inch between mounds even though they spread little.
- Folding the chocolateAdd the chocolate at the very end and fold with a spatula, not the beater. Overworking at this stage deflates the foam and the puffs come out flat and dense instead of hollow.
- Cooling and releaseThey come away cleanly only when fully cold, as the author says. If they stick, they are underdried, not overbaked; return them to the low oven for another twenty minutes.
- Yield and keepingExpect roughly 3 to 4 dozen puffs of about 1½ inches. Store airtight the same day; meringue draws moisture from the air and the shells go leathery within hours in a humid kitchen.
Meringue "puffs" or "kisses" were a use for the standing surplus of egg whites that piled up in any shop using yolks by the quart for custards, curds and rich cakes. A hot-beaten, heavily sugared meringue of the kind this book's method appears to describe is what is now called Swiss meringue; it holds its shape through piping and drying and keeps in a tin. Grated chocolate stirred into such mixtures appears in American books in the later nineteenth century, as solid unsweetened chocolate became widely available, and it is presented here exactly as above: not a new recipe but "only a slight change in the ingredients" from the plain version, one base spun into a range of varieties.