Meringue

The sweet, airy, featherweight delicacy known as meringue is made with a handful of ingredients: egg whites, sugar, some kind of acid such as cream of tartar or vinegar, and the most important, although invisible component - air. Meringue is incredibly versatile and it is mostly prepared to turn desserts into works of art: it can be whipped into frostings for cakes, spooned on pies, incorporated into cakes to make them fluffy, or mixed with chocolate, fruits, and ground nuts for extra flavor. The origins of meringue are still somewhat shrouded in mystery, but the Larousse Gastronomique claims it was either invented by a Swiss pastry chef with Italian origins, named Gasparini, or by King Stanislas I Leszcynski's chef, because some believe that the word meringue comes from the Polish word marzynka. There are also other sources claiming that meringue is an English invention. Regardless of the origins, most food historians agree on the fact that meringue was shaped with a spoon until the early 19th century, and the famous French chef Antoine Carême first started using a pastry bag in order to form this decadent dessert into a more aesthetically pleasing shape. Meringue can be consumed in its soft or hard form, and is usually prepared using French, Italian, or Swiss methods, which all differ from one another. These three methods gave life to a wide variety of popular desserts, including the beloved meringue cake.