In this new post we continue our journey into the world of meringues!
In the last instalment we talked about the two classic types of meringue: French meringue and Swiss meringue. Today we turn to the distinctive, fascinating Italian meringue and to that wide world of rich meringues — dacquoise, Japonais and Progrès biscuits, and so on — which are nothing more than meringues with powdered nuts added. But let's take things in order.
Italian meringue is a soft, delicate sweet, born here in Italy not to be used and eaten just as it is — like, say, spumiglie — but as an element that lightens, aerates, sweetens and softens. Italian meringue was, and still is, used in spoonable desserts such as mousses and in fruit tarts, in creams that need extra softness such as Chiboust cream, in whipped cream as a sweetening vehicle and supporting element, in ice-cream making to lighten ice creams and sorbets, combined with cream in Sicilian cassate, in schiumoni, in semifreddos. Italian meringue is therefore a distinctive base that stands apart from the other meringues: it is indeed made with whipped egg white, but the sugar is not added in crystal form — it is first cooked to 120 °C. This method brings two hugely important factors:
- You get a meringue that is far creamier, softer and more delicate than with the other methods, because adding hot sugar causes a partial denaturation of the proteins, improving the stability and density of the mixture;
- By adding sugar cooked to 118–120 °C I pasteurise and sanitise the egg white against any pathogens it may contain (salmonella), and so obtain a product I can use “raw”.
Italian meringue, then, is not baked in the oven, since it already goes through a cooking process during preparation; rather, it is used as a sweetening and aerating element in fresh desserts. Another technique meringue lends itself to beautifully is torching: in much of today's pastry work we find desserts covered with Italian meringue that are lightly scorched with an open flame, creating a very pleasing play of light and dark — Lemon Pie being a case in point. This method allows you, on the one hand, to create a lovely visual effect and, on the other, to harden the surface of the meringue, which keeps the product from collapsing and lets it stay stable and soft beneath the torched part.
Now we come to the quantities and, above all, to the preparation of the meringue — not the simplest thing to pull off. First, though, it is worth looking at a couple of points concerning its ingredients:
- The sugar must be cooked to the right temperature, to prevent crystals that are still “free” from remaining and later forming crystals in the whipped meringue. This is because the egg white, being a colloid, cannot completely dissolve the added sugar.
- It is useful to add a small amount of glucose syrup, which serves the same purpose as cooking the caster sugar: it prevents the sucrose from crystallising.
Italian meringue: recipe and method
100 g egg white
50 g caster sugar
140 g caster sugar
10 g glucose syrup
50 g water
Adding a small part of the sugar to the egg white serves to stabilise its proteins more effectively and to allow the sugar to dissolve properly.
The meringue is prepared in two steps that run simultaneously:
- The first is whipping the 100 g of egg white with the 50 g of sugar
- The second is cooking the 140 g of sugar to 120 °C together with the 10 g of glucose syrup and the 50 g of water, which will then be poured in a thin stream into the whipped egg white. A probe thermometer is recommended for this operation.
As I said, these two operations must happen at the same time. It is important that the sugar reaches its cooking temperature at the very moment the egg white is fully whipped. This certainly calls for a little attention and experience.
If, for instance, the sugar is not ready while the egg white is already well along, you will have to keep whipping the egg white, at the risk of it turning grainy; if instead you stop the machine while waiting for the sugar to reach its cooking temperature, there is a danger the egg white will collapse irreversibly.
Conversely, if the sugar is cooked but the egg white has not yet reached the desired consistency, you will be forced to stop the sugar's cooking, with the drawback that as it cools it thickens and no longer flows smoothly into the egg white — the end result being a heavy, greasy meringue.
The most practical system is this: knowing that the sugar takes longer to cook than the egg white does to whip, it is best to start by cooking the sugar up to 105 °C; at that point, begin whipping the egg white at medium speed (2). When it starts to foam, rain in the sugar and carry on until the whisk marks begin to show on its surface. Now move up to a higher speed (3–4), meanwhile keeping an eye on the temperature of the sugar by raising or lowering the flame. It is worth pointing out that the sugar takes longer to go from 105 to 120 °C than it does to come to the boil from cold.
When the sugar reaches its cooking temperature, pour it in a thin stream into the whipped egg white, lowering the speed back to 2 and taking great care not to let the sugar run onto the whisk of the stand mixer: its rotating movement would scatter countless drops of sugar onto the side of the bowl which, as they cooled and hardened, would no longer play any part in the balance of the meringue.
Once all the sugar has been poured into the egg white, bring the machine back up to speed 3 and let the whipping and the cooling of the meringue run their course. The process is over when we have a voluminous, glossy and extremely stable product. The test: take a little meringue with a spoon and hold it horizontally — a stable beak of meringue should form at the tip.
Now we can use the product straight away, or put it in a container covered with cling film pressed onto the surface and transfer it to the freezer, where it will keep for up to a couple of weeks.
Rich meringues
As I hinted at the start, there are many kinds of meringue to which a portion of powdered nuts — or cocoa, coconut or chocolate — is added to flavour the product, together with tiny amounts of flour or starch to stabilise the meringue. These enriched meringues are baked at high temperature (200–210 °C) for a short time (10–15 min) so as to obtain a product with a thin crust on the surface and a soft heart inside; in pastry work they are used as bases or inserts for cakes and mignons. They are prepared just like ordinary meringues — whipping the egg white and the sugar properly — except that at the end of whipping the enriching ingredients are folded in very gently. Careful: as mentioned in the first post on meringues (SEE THE WHITE LADY), egg white suffers terribly in the presence of fat and, when fat is around, tends to collapse quickly. The enriching ingredients, as we have seen, are all fats, so mixing them into the meringue must always be done with the help of a silicone spatula and with extreme delicacy, while avoiding drawing the mixing out too long. The product must then be piped from a piping bag fitted with a plain 6–8 mm nozzle, forming flat shapes as you like on baking paper. Finally, baking must take place immediately after shaping, in a preheated conventional oven. If you use a fan oven, the baking temperature must be lowered by 20 °C.
Now let's look at a couple of recipes.
Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer.
