Break seven egg-whites in a basin and beat them on a slow fire with a pound of icing sugar to form into a very light and firm meringue, then add to it one good tablespoonful of coffee essence, mixing it in lightly. Lay this through a pocket on a paper-covered damp board into small meringue shapes and cook in a slack oven. As soon as done fasten them together two by two.
A Swiss-style meringue in all but name — whites and sugar whipped together over gentle heat — flavored with coffee essence and baked dry rather than browned. Two things decide the outcome: the heat under the bowl and the temperature of the oven.
The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and its petits fours chapter is essentially a French pastry repertoire transplanted to Manhattan. The name meringue italienne in professional French usage distinguishes meringue stabilized by heat from the plain cold-beaten meringue ordinaire — strictly it refers to whites whipped with boiling sugar syrup, though Ranhofer here uses the warmed-bowl method a modern pastry cook would call Swiss, and the terms were not yet rigidly fixed. The word meringue itself is often traced to the Swiss town of Meiringen, a folk etymology that is repeated far more often than it is documented. Coffee essence, a bottled concentrate, was a way to flavor creams and icings without thinning them.