No. 140

Plain Meringue Preparation and Italian Meringue with Cooked Sugar

Pate a Meringue Ordinaire et Pate a Meringue Italienne Avec Sucre Cuit

The preparation for meringues is composed of twelve or fifteen egg-whites for each pound of powdered sugar; set these whites in a basin with a grain of salt and beat up with a whip, very slowly at first, but increasing the velocity of the movement as the quantity becomes greater. The beaten whites should be stiff and remarkably smooth; then mix in the sugar a little at a time, using a wooden spoon for the purpose.

Italian Meringue with Cooked Sugar.—Cook one pound of sugar to "ball" (No. 171); incorporate a very little of it at a time into six beaten whites, without ceasing to stir; when all the sugar is absorbed work it for two minutes longer on a slow fire to have it very smooth.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two base preparations from Ranhofer's elementary section: a French meringue beaten raw, and an Italian meringue built on hot syrup. Both are written for a professional kitchen turning out dozens of portions, so the first adjustment is scale.

"Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn 1894 kitchen usage this means sugar ground fine — closer to today's caster or superfine granulated. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch and will give a chalky, slightly gummy meringue. Use superfine granulated.
Scale it downOne pound of sugar to twelve or fifteen whites is a hotel batch. For a home quantity, work at 4 whites (about 120 g) to 120–140 g sugar for the plain meringue, and 3 whites to 225 g sugar for the Italian.
The plain meringue is unusually leanThe plain meringue is lean by modern standards -- At a pound of sugar to twelve or fifteen whites it carries only a little more sugar than white by weight, well short of the modern 2:1 shell. Expect a softer result that is less able to hold a crisp hollow shell for long, and bake it promptly rather than letting it stand.
Salt, and what to use insteadThe grain of salt does not strengthen the foam and may slightly slow or weaken it. A pinch of cream of tartar, or an unlined copper bowl of the kind common in period professional kitchens, gives a more stable and more forgiving whip. Ranhofer specifies only a 'basin'.
Folding by hand still mattersAdding the sugar a little at a time with a wooden spoon is the hinge of the plain method. Dumping it in, or running the mixer through this stage, deflates the whites and the meringue slumps as it bakes.
"Ball" is soft-ball sugar"Ball" is the soft-ball end of the sugar scale -- Ranhofer's No. 171 sets out the degrees of sugar boiling; 'ball' here is usually read as somewhere around 240-245F (116-118C), though the original does not specify small or large ball. Pour the syrup into the whites in a thin steady stream against the side of the bowl while the whip runs; a fast pour cooks streaks of white into threads.
Skip the slow fireThe two minutes over low heat is there to make the mixture very smooth; with a stand mixer you can instead beat until the bowl is cool to the hand, five to eight minutes. Reheating an Italian meringue risks graining the sugar.
Baking the plain meringueThe original gives no oven. Shells and cases want a very slack oven — 200–225°F (95–105°C) for one and a half to three hours depending on size, with the door cracked at the end to dry them through.
What each is forThe plain meringue is for baked shells, vacherins and cases. The Italian is a finishing meringue: buttercream, bombes, iced puddings, and the tops of tarts to be browned briefly under high heat.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, spread over two spells between the 1860s and the 1890s, and its "Elementary Methods" chapter reads like a working manual for a brigade rather than a book for the home cook — hence the pound of sugar and the fifteen whites, and hence the cross-references to numbered sugar degrees. Meringue in something like its modern form is generally traced to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, though earlier baked egg-white confections exist; the often-repeated story that it takes its name from Meiringen in Switzerland, or from a pastry cook called Gasparini, is traditional rather than documented. The division Ranhofer sets out here is clear enough: the raw-beaten French meringue for baking dry, and the Italian method with cooked sugar, which by the nineteenth century was the usual choice for elaborate iced and moulded desserts needing a meringue stable at room temperature.