1,541 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

The 3 kinds of meringue

Meringue – what could be simpler? Just beaten egg whites with sugar added. This makes a fairly stiff mixture which can then be cooked in a cool oven to create those lovely, light confections.

But in the world of professional patisserie, meringue comes in three different kinds. Even if the principle is the same (egg whites + sugar), the results are quite distinct and lend themselves to different uses.

65 K 4.5/5 (22 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Pastry Meringue French Italian Swiss Egg whites Beaten

Last modified on: June 14^th 2013

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

The 3 kinds of meringue

French meringue

french meringue

This is the simplest, the easiest to make, your basic meringue. The egg whites are beaten until stiff, then caster sugar (50 g per egg white) is folded in. It's not difficult, you can let children help (they love it) and this makes very light, fluffy meringues.

Swiss meringue

swiss meringue

The method for this is a bit different: the egg whites and caster sugar are mixed together at the start , then heated to 50°C over a bain marie before beating. This makes rather denser meringues, the sort often used to make decorative items (mushrooms, etc.) to add a finishing touch to desserts and cakes (Christmas logs, for example). If you buy meringues from a French baker, they are generally the Swiss type.

Italian meringue

italian meringue

Italian meringue is the most complicated: the egg whites are beaten as usual, but the sugar is cooked to the hard-ball stage (120°C) before being added to the egg whites. This makes a very smooth meringue, often used as the base for other recipes, such as nougat glacé (frozen nougat) or a pear and lime meringue pie.

To sum up

As you can see, it's all a matter of temperature (well, almost), as the basic mix of egg whites and sugar is the same. Do remember, though, that even if a particular meringue is better suited to certain recipes, in practice, you can choose whichever type suits you.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,1515

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,1885

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,086

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,9475

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,6643

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201767 K 24.2

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202034 K4.4

Maillard reactions

This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28^th 201538 K4

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201378 K4.0

A few tips for effective kneading at home

When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23^th 2021284 K 23.8