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Meringues
Put in a pan a pound of granulated sugar with a pint of cold water, and place it on the hot stove. Have two quarts of ice-water in a bowl, and when the sugar comes to the boil dip the fingers in the ice-water and pass them quickly round the inside of the sugar-pan after boiling for five minutes. Dip a wooden stick in the ice-water, then in the sugar, and again in the ice-water, lifting up the stick to feel the sugar that adheres. If it cannot be formed into a ball, boil it a little longer, and when it is ready, remove it from the fire so that it no longer boils. While the sugar is cooking beat, the whites of five eggs in a copper basin, and while beating place the sugar in very carefully, when all is added, lay the basin in ice-water. Mix this gently for five minutes, adding one teaspoonful of vanilla flavoring. Cover the basin with a napkin, leaving it for ten minutes. Butter and flour a baking-sheet; slide a fancy tube into a silk bag, fill the bag with the preparation, press it out on the baking-sheet in the shape of letters. Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar, place in a very slow oven and bake for fifteen minutes. When they are baked, these cakes should be white. Remove them from the oven, let them get cold, dress on a glass stand, and serve.
This is an Italian meringue — hot sugar syrup beaten into raw whites — piped as letters and dried rather than truly baked. The syrup stage is the hinge: everything else is straightforward.
- Cook the syrup to soft ball, 238-240FThe wooden-stick test described here is the old soft-ball test; a candy thermometer reads 238-240F at the same point. Under-cooked syrup gives a slack meringue that weeps in the oven, over-cooked syrup sets in threads before it is absorbed.
- Washing down the panDipping the fingers in ice water and running them round the inside of the pan dissolves sugar crystals off the sides so the syrup does not grain. A pastry brush dipped in cold water does the same job without putting your hand near boiling sugar, and is the modern practice.
- A very slow oven is 200-225FThese are dried, not browned. Fifteen minutes at that temperature will only set the surface of small piped letters; anything with body needs an hour or more, with the door left ajar. Oscar's note that they should still be white is the real test.
- Adding the syrupPour it in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl with the whites at full beat, not into the middle of the whisk, or it will set in lumps against the metal. Then keep beating until the bowl is no longer warm — the ice-water bath in the original does this faster.
- Copper basinCopper reacts with the whites and helps stabilise the foam, but a clean stainless bowl and a stand mixer work as well. Whatever you use must be free of grease; a wipe with vinegar or lemon before starting is worth the trouble.
- Sugar to whitesA pound of sugar (about 450 g) to five whites (roughly 150-175 g) is a very sweet, very stable meringue, close to a 3:1 ratio. Most of the pint of water boils away during the five-plus minutes of cooking, so ignore it as a wet ingredient.
- Silk bag and fancy tubeA piping bag with a star or plain round tip. Pipe the letters no more than finger-thick so they dry through, and leave a good inch between them.
- Baking sheetButtered and floured is workable but the letters stick. Parchment is better, and a light dusting of powdered sugar just before they go in, as directed, still gives the fine crackled surface.
- Yield and keepingFive whites at this ratio should pipe roughly forty to fifty small letters, depending how large you make them. Stored airtight and dry they keep for a week or more; refrigeration ruins them.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his cook book in 1896, and much of it is professional banquet work written down rather than home cooking — which is why a meringue recipe here assumes a copper basin, a silk piping bag and letters piped to order. Lettered and monogrammed confections suited hotel work of this kind, and could spell out a guest's initials or a name on a dessert stand at a private dinner. The name meringue is often traced to the Swiss town of Meiringen, and its invention traditionally credited to a pastry cook named Gasparini, though neither claim is documented; the technique of beating boiling syrup into whites, what French kitchens call meringue italienne, was well established in professional pastry by the middle of the nineteenth century and gave a foam firm enough to hold a piped shape through a long slow drying.