Meringue Tips

Meringues are foams that combine stiffly beaten egg whites, sugar and an acid. The consistency of a meringue depends on its sugar content and how it’s cooked, and it can range from soft to chewy to brittle. 

It’s typically a topping for pies, as in lemon meringue pie, but it can also be more cakelike and used as a base for a dish like pavlova.

Some important points to keep in mind when making meringue:

• Fat interferes with the formation of a good foam, so keep fat away at all costs. Never use a plastic bowl for whipping egg whites. Fat clings to plastic, and no matter how well you’ve cleaned that bowl, chances are some grease remains. Always use a glass or stainless steel bowl for making meringues.

•  Yolk contains fat, so don’t let even a drop of yolk get in your egg whites. Break your egg whites individually into a separate bowl to ensure each one is clean before you combine them in your larger bowl.

• Leave the egg whites at room temperature for about half an hour before beating them; cold egg whites don’t beat into a foam as easily.

• Whip your egg whites into soft peaks before adding the sugar. Adding it in the beginning can double your whipping time. The sugar molecules get in the way of the egg proteins, and it takes longer for the proteins to find each other and form bonds. Ah, that sounds so sweet, doesn’t it?

•  Why add vinegar? Acid helps avoid lumpiness, loss of water and collapse. Scientifically speaking, by adding acid, you’re adding positively charged particles, or hydrogen ions, that hop onto charged portions of the proteins and leave them uncharged. Electrically neutral proteins are less likely to react with other proteins. In other words, vinegar = good.