Star Kisses
1 pound of fine granulated sugar. 8 whites of eggs. Flavoring extract. Whip the whites with a bunch of wire in a cold place until they are firm enough to bear up an egg, add the sugar and flavor and beat a few seconds longer. Put the meringue paste thus made into a sack and star-pointed tube or else into a stiff paper cornet having the point cut like saw teeth and press out portions size of walnuts on to pans slightly greased and then wiped clean. Bake in a very slack oven about 10 minutes or till the kisses are of a light fawn color and swelled partially hollow. They slip off easily when cold.
A plain hard-meringue formula from the era before stand mixers and parchment paper. Two things need translating: what "a very slack oven" means, and how long these actually take at that heat.
- QuantitiesOne pound of fine granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; eight large egg whites run about 240 g, or a scant cup. That is roughly double the sugar-to-white ratio of a soft meringue topping, which is what makes these dry crisp and keep.
- "Very slack oven"Slack is at the cool end of a range's working heat; period sources place it variously, often around 250-300F, with "very slack" cooler still, so somewhere in the region of 200-250F. That overlaps modern meringue practice, so little adjustment is needed.
- The 10 minutes is the tellTen minutes at 225F will not dry a walnut-sized meringue through, though the recipe asks only for a light fawn colour and a kiss "swelled partially hollow", not one dried hard. In a coal or wood range the declining heat of an oven already fired would have carried on the work after the stated ten minutes. If you want them dry through, expect 45-75 minutes at 225F, then the oven turned off with the door ajar until cool.
- "Firm enough to bear up an egg"The period test for a fully stiff white: the foam is dense enough to hold up a whole egg in the shell. In modern terms, whip to stiff, glossy peaks that hold their shape on the whisk without weeping.
- Adding the sugarThe instruction to add all the sugar and beat "a few seconds longer" is brisk. Rain it in over a minute or so with the whisk running and keep going until the meringue is smooth rather than grainy between the fingers, or the finished kisses will bead syrup on the surface.
- PansGreasing then wiping clean leaves the barest film so the meringues release; a hot-buttered pan makes them spread. Parchment or a silicone mat does the same job with no fuss.
- "Fine granulated" mattersThis indicates a finer grade of granulated sugar rather than the coarse standard, and is probably closest to today's caster sugar. Ordinary granulated works but dissolves more slowly.
- PipingA star tube gives the ridged points the name refers to. The paper cornet with a saw-toothed cut is the improvised version and produces the same effect.
- Yield and keepingAbout five to six dozen walnut-sized kisses. Once fully dry they hold a week or two in an airtight tin; they go soft quickly in humid air.
"Kisses" was the standard American and English confectioner's word through the nineteenth century for small baked meringues, and it long predates the chocolate drop that later borrowed the name; the qualifier here simply describes the star tube used to press them out. Whitehead's book was written for men working hotel and restaurant pastry departments, which explains the scale and the shorthand: eight whites at a time, a piping sack assumed to be at hand, and a paper cornet offered as the fallback when it is not. The reliance on the coolest corner of a coal range is also of its period, since a working oven that had finished its bread or roasts held a slow, declining heat for hours, and meringues were one of the things that heat was good for. The test of a foam stiff enough to hold up a whole egg turns up in cookbooks on both sides of the Atlantic and is a reminder that everything here was beaten by hand with a bundle of wires.