PASTRY PANTHEON:
A COLLECTION OF ESSENTIAL CLASSICS

Meringues

By Meryle Evans

Public’s muscovado Pavlova.

May is National Egg Month, the perfect time to pay homage to melt-in-the-mouth meringues... the voluptuous vacherins, mysterious baked Alaskas, and ethereal Pavlovas, those billowy egg white creations that have been stars in the pastry chef's firmament for centuries.

Dietary staples since the Chinese and Indians first domesticated poultry thousands of years ago, eggs have also been cultural symbols, heralding new life and the arrival of spring, the prime season for laying eggs before we began to fool the chickens with artificial light.

Recipes for egg dishes abound in ancient Greek and Roman cooking manuscripts, but it was not until the 1500's that sugar became readily available and cooks discovered that egg whites could be beaten to a froth with a bundle of twigs. Soon, "snow creams," the precursors of meringues, became popular desserts. A recipe in the mid-16th century A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye called for thick sweet cream, egg whites, sugar, and rosewater, beaten with a stick cut in four pieces at the end, "and as it ryseth take it of and put it into a Collaunder." How long would it take for the preparation to "ryseth"? Period cookbooks recommend beating at least for an hour, sometimes two. The "snow" was often served as a novelty at royal banquets, mounded over an apple, or spread on rosemary branches to resemble real snow.

In the early 1600's, another meringue-like dish, "white biskit bread" was handwritten in the recipe book of an Elizabethan Englishwoman, Lady Elinor Fettiplace. Lady Elinor mixed sugar and just a little flour with a dozen egg whites "beaten verie finelie" and a little bruised aniseed. The biskits were laid on paper "coffins," or cases, and baked in a slow oven.

Across the Channel French chefs were also furiously whisking up an egg white storm.

Credit for making the first real meringues is difficult to establish, but Francois Massialot, the great Parisian chef who cooked for several members of the royal family and wrote Le Cuisinier Royal et Bourgois (1691), was certainly a contender. His book, translated into English in 1702 as The Court and Country Cook, includes two recipes for meringues. Massialot gave instructions to whip the egg whites "till they form a rocky snow." He folded in grated lemon rind or pistachios, shaped his meringues into walnut-sized ovals with a spoon, and baked them on sheets of white paper in a slow oven. After they had cooled, Massialot noted, "You may also put in a little fruit, as a raspberry, strawberry, or cherry, according to the season, and joyn other meringues to them to make twins."

The recipes in Massialot's 17th-century cookbook deflate the claim that meringues were invented in the town of Meiringen, Switzerland in 1720 by a pastry chef named Gasparini. But it is a pleasant legend that the little village still perpetuates. Pastry shop windows filled with all kinds of meringues lure visitors, and in 1985, local bakers made the largest meringue in the world with 2,000 egg whites for The Guinness Book of World Records. It was baked in a sauna because it was too big to fit in any oven!

While the Swiss may not have invented the meringue, they did provide the name for one of three techniques used to prepare the batter, by whipping the whites and sugar together over hot water.

French meringue usually refers to an uncooked mixture of beaten egg whites and sugar while Italian meringue is made by whipping the egg whites until they are stiff and then adding boiled sugar syrup, resulting in a more stable meringue.

Throughout the 18th-century, as better stoves and more efficient whisks became available, confectioners devised more complicated desserts like the chocolate puffs in Mary Eales' Complete Confectioner, published in London in 1742. Traditionally, meringues were shaped with a spoon into an egg-like dome, but the master pioneering pastry chef Antonin Careme (1784-1833), who was as interested in decoration as in culinary innovation, also redesigned kitchen equipment, using a pastry bag and a variety of tips to pipe meringues into rings, shells, frostings, and fanciful shapes.

Rose petals and rhubarb from No.9 Park. Photo courtesy of www.BostonChefs.com.

It was the dawn of a new era for 19th-century pastry chefs who created all manner of beguiling confections. The vacherin, named for its resemblance in shape and color to the popular French cheese, combined meringue rings, ice cream, whipped cream, and fruits. It remains popular with contemporary chefs. Alain Ducasse won bravos at a recent lunch in his New York City restaurant for visiting French women chefs with a vacherin "crown" set in a pool of raspberry sauce with a scoop of raspberry gelato nestled inside, whipped cream piped between the prongs of the crown, and a crystallized violet on top. For her rhubarb rose vacherin, Kristin Murray, pastry chef at Boston's award winning restaurant No. 9 Park, folds rose petals into rhubarb marmalade surrounded by piped rosettes of meringues and whipped cream.

The addition of ground almonds, hazelnuts, and chocolate to meringues inspired Careme's compatriots to concoct the divine dacquoise and its kissing cousins, the japonais, succes, and Malakoff, with piped layers spread with coffee, praline, or other buttercream fillings. Pierre Lacam, the French pastry chef and culinary historian whose life spanned much of the 19th-century, preferred pastries made with a meringue topping. His most famous is the Massena, which he dedicated to the Duc de Rivoli: an oval of shortcrust pastry, a layer of chestnut puree, an oval of sponge cake covered with Italian meringue, then iced with half-chocolate, half-coffee frosting.

Base or topping, the meringue had become a culinary celebrity. The noted gourmet Brillat Savarin, author of Physiology of the Taste (1825), proposed meringues flavored with vanilla and rosewater for dessert at one of a series of "gastronomic tests" he devised for hosts to appraise the palates of their guests. If the look on their faces when the food was served did not "flash with desire or beam with ecstasy," he said, they shouldn't be invited back.

Surprise would be the best way to describe the look on diners' faces when they first encounter the baked Alaska. The pastry chef who first thought of blanketing a brick of ice cream with meringue and browning it in an oven is an unsolved mystery, but the Alaska became a popular novelty in the 1860's. According to Larousse Gastronomique, it was introduced in Paris in 1866 when chefs for a visiting Chinese delegation demonstrated the art of making vanilla and ginger ices in a baked crust.

In New York, Charles Ranhofer, the renowned chef of the elegant 19th-century dining establishment Delmonico's, created a sensation with the "Alaska, Florida" made in honor of the purchase of the Alaska territory in 1867. George Augustus Sala, a visiting British journalist who dined at Delmonico's raved about the dish, although he guessed the ingredients incorrectly: "The Alaska is a baked ice... but this is no traveller's tale. The nucleus or core of this entremet is an ice cream. This is surrounded by an envelope of carefully whipped cream, which, just before the dainty dish is served, is popped into the oven, or is brought under the influence of a red hot salamander, so that its surface is covered with a light brown crust. So you go on discussing the warm cream soufflé, till you come, with somewhat painful suddenness, on the row of ice." Ranhofer's recipe in his monumental cookbook, The Epicurean (1894), was made with a savoy biscuit base and half-banana, half-vanilla ice cream frozen in a tall conical mold. Delmonico's has disappeared, but the Alaska still delights New York diners. It has been the traditional finale at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center, presented with a flourish on a silver tray, flamed at the table, and served with brandy and berries. At Manhattan's Monkey Bar, pastry chef Julian Clauss-Ehlers combines a variety of flavors for his individual Alaskas—orange ice cream packed in a dome-shaped mold with a ginger crème caramel is covered with spikes of piped meringue and browned with a blow torch just before serving.

Lately, the Down-Under dessert, Pavlova, has become a major meringue player. Named for the Russian ballet star Anna Pavlova who toured New Zealand and Australia in the 1920's, both countries claim it as their own. The Kiwis insist it first appeared in a local cookbook in 1929, while the Aussies are equally adamant that it was first made by chef Herbert Sachse at the Hotel Esplanade in Perth in 1935. However, nobody disputes the appeal of the large meringue with a puffy marshmallow-like center, topped with whipped cream and fruit.

Bill Yosses, executive chef at Josephs in New York City, presents a handsome version of the "Pav" with blueberries, passionfruit, and vanilla ice cream while executive chef Brad Farmerie at Public in NoLita who has worked with New Zealand chefs, serves a muscovado Pavlova with banana caramel, whipped cream, and cranberry-rosewater compote.

	Blueberry and passionfruit Pavlova by Bill Yosses. Photo by Battman Studios.

Of course, this is only the tip of the meringue iceberg. Floating islands abound. At Blue Fin, pastry chef George McKirdy candies Meyer lemons and folds them into the meringue that floats on a Meyer lemon and vanilla crème anglaise. Our all-American lemon meringue pie, a classic for over a century, also has a Meyer lemon twist at The Harrison where pastry chef Jeff Gerace serves the pie with candied kumquats and a lemon thyme sabayon.

"There is just something magical about meringues," sums up pastry pro Jacques Torres. "They are light, airy, satisfying—and delicious."
 

MALTED NUT BAKED ALASKA
Pastry Chef Tai Chopping, Dry Creek Kitchen, Healdsburg, California

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