Peruvian · Dessert
Suspiro a la Limeña
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, a floral thread lifting the aroma, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 400 ml evaporated milk
- 400 g sweetened condensed milk
- 4 egg yolks
- 5 ml vanilla extract
- 2 egg whites
- 150 g caster sugar
- 60 ml port
- 1 g fine salt
- 2 g ground cinnamon
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook the two milks together in a heavy pan over medium heat, scraping the whole base with a flat spatula, until the mixture is the colour of wet sand and a track drawn across the pan stays open for a beat.
- Off the heat, whisk a ladle of the hot manjar into the yolks with the vanilla, return it all to the pan and stir over low heat for 2 minutes until it coats the spatula thickly; never let it boil or the yolks curdle into threads. 2 min
- Pour into glasses and chill until cold and set.
- Boil the port and sugar without stirring to 118C (244F), the point where a drop pressed in cold water rolls into a soft ball.
- Whip the whites with the salt to soft peaks, pour the syrup in a thin thread down the side of the bowl and beat until the meringue is glossy, holds a stiff hook and the bowl is only blood warm.
- Spoon it over the cold manjar and dust with cinnamon.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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