A Meringue Kiss

The name meringue first appeared in François Massialot's book "Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits" in 1692.

In the Loire region of France slow baked meringues are nicknamed "pets" ('farts' in French) because of their light and fluffy texture


The recommended daily intake of sugar for women is 25 grams or 6 teaspoons of sugar a day and for men it is 37.5 grams or 9 teaspoons a day. To make a dozen small authentic French meringues you need to use 96 grams of sugar.

Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. A hotel chef in Wellington, New Zealand, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour.

In 1999, Te Papa Museum in Wellington made a pavlova, named Pavzilla, the measured 45m. This record was beaten in 2005 by students from the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke's Bay. It took 5000 egg whites, 150kg of sugar and 150 litres of cream to build "Pavkong". The sugar used equates to enough for one teaspoon of sugar in 165,000 cups of tea.

Meringue is a very efficient insulator because it is made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny bubbles. This is why ice cream does not melt when coated with meringue in a Baked Alaska. The bubbles of air slow down the transfer of heat, so the meringue is cooked and the ice cream isn't.

Eton mess is a traditional English dessert consisting of a mixture of strawberries, pieces of meringue and cream. A popular, though probably untrue, myth is that Eton mess was first created when a meringue dessert was dropped accidentally and what could be salvaged was served as a crushed meringue with strawberries and cream.