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Maraschino Meringues
Put one pound of sugar into a saucepan, reduce it almost to the crack, and let it cool. In the meantime beat the whites of some eggs to a froth, and work them into the sugar, then add two tablespoonfuls of maraschino. Arrange equal-sized portions of the meringue on strips of paper, sprinkle with sugar and bake in an oven; as soon as the top part is set take them out, place two together with the moist part left in them, leave them in a hot closet to dry and they are ready for use.
A late-nineteenth-century Italian meringue, made by beating hot sugar syrup into whipped whites rather than folding in dry sugar. The instructions assume a professional pastry cook, so the quantities and oven behaviour need filling in.
- "Almost to the crack"On the old sugar-boiling scale, crack is usually given as around 300-310F, so "almost the crack" points to the soft-crack range, roughly 270-290F. Take it off the heat there; boiled much further the syrup will start to colour and taste of caramel.
- "Let it cool" is relativeThe syrup must not cool to setting point or the whites cannot be worked into it. Let it stop bubbling and lose its fiercest heat for a minute or two before combining. Note that the recipe works the beaten whites into the sugar, rather than pouring syrup onto the whites as a modern Italian meringue would.
- How many whitesThe original says only "some." For a pound of sugar, something like eight to ten large whites (roughly 8-10 oz) would give a workable proportion. Fewer whites yields a denser, sweeter meringue that resists drying.
- MaraschinoThis means the clear, dry Dalmatian cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries and their kernels, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries. Two tablespoons of a modern maraschino liqueur is the right substitution; the jar syrup will make the mixture weep.
- Strips of paperParchment on a flat baking sheet. Nineteenth-century kitchens used paper because it could be peeled or damped off the base of the meringue; parchment releases cleanly once the shells are cool.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. A meringue oven is generally a slow one; something in the region of 200-225F suits. The recipe wants the outside set and the inside still soft, so watch for the surface to firm and go matte, without taking colour, rather than timing it.
- The hot closetA warming cupboard beside the range, well under 200F. The oven at its lowest setting with the door propped, or a dehydrator at 150-170F for several hours, does the same job. The shells are done when they are light and sound hollow.
- YieldA pound of sugar with that many whites makes a large batch, so expect a good many shells and half that number of finished doubles. Sealed in an airtight tin they keep a week; humidity is their enemy.
Meringues built on boiled sugar syrup rather than raw sugar were one of the pastry cook's versions of the form around the time Oscar Tschirky assembled his book in 1896, valued in hotel kitchens because the mixture holds its shape for hours before baking. The hollowing-and-pairing step is the beginning of the meringue shell that would be filled with whipped cream or ice cream at the table. The flavouring points to the period as clearly as anything: maraschino, the clear liqueur distilled around Zadar on the Dalmatian coast from marasca cherries, was a staple of American hotel bars and pastry rooms in the 1890s. Its modern namesake, the dyed cocktail cherry, is a later and quite separate product that took the name from the liqueur the cherries were once steeped in.