Whipping a meringue · The World Table

On the Path of Study: Semester 6: Pastry Fundamentals, Semester 10: The Restaurateur's Capstone

From the Lexicon, Meringues: French, Swiss, Italian

One foam, three temperaments. FRENCH: raw whites whipped with sugar; lightest, least stable, for baking into pavlova shells and folding into batters. SWISS: whites and sugar warmed over a bain-marie to ~70°C then whipped, denser, glossier, safe from grit, the buttercream base. ITALIAN: 118°C sugar syrup streamed into whipping whites: fully cooked, the most stable of all, for torching (baked Alaska, tarte au citron meringuée) and marshmallow work. Universal laws: no trace of yolk fat, a clean bowl, sugar added gradually, and 'stiff peaks' means the tip stands with a slight bow; chalky over-whip is one minute past glory.

Read it in the Lexicon →

How to tell it is going right

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.

A chosen film Meringue - Swiss, French and Italian recipes Matt Adlard Watch for: All three meringues made side by side, so you can compare how the whites behave raw, warmed over water, and hit with hot syrup, and see the difference in gloss and peak stability that follows.