Italian Sardinian Myrtle and Almond Meringues | Meringhe al Mirto e Mandorle Sarde
Updated: 6 days ago
A meringue is sugar, egg white and patience, and there is nowhere to hide inside it. Add two Sardinian ingredients to that austerity and the dessert stops being a neutral sweet and starts tasting of a specific place: almonds toasted just short of colour, and myrtle, reduced to a syrup so that the wild resinous berry of the island macchia reaches the meringue as perfume rather than as alcohol.
This is a composed dessert, not a codified village recipe, and it is written as one. What is traditional here are the components. Sardinia has one of the oldest almond confectionery traditions in Italy and one of the most recognisable regional liqueurs in mirto. What is modern is the vehicle, a low dried meringue that carries both without heat or fat getting in the way.
The whole recipe turns on restraint. Too much myrtle and the meringue tastes medicinal; too much liquid and the foam collapses in the tray; too much oven and the shells go sandy and hollow rather than crisp with a soft centre. The instructions below are built to stop each of those three things from happening.
Yield: about 24 small meringues. Prep: 30 minutes. Dry: 2 hours. Rest in the oven: 45 minutes. Total: about 3 hours 15 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: dessert or petit four. Region: Sardinia.
The Story
Almonds built Sardinian pastry. The groves of the Campidano and the country around Oristano supplied a confectionery repertoire that is still made today and still recognisably its own: amaretti in Oristano, gueffus rolled and twisted in paper, candelaus shaped and glazed white for weddings, sospiri from Ozieri. In almost all of them the almond is ground or chopped and bound with sugar and egg, and in many of them only the white of the egg is used, because the yolks were wanted elsewhere in a kitchen that wasted nothing. That is the root this dessert grows from. It is also why toasted almond and whipped egg white feel native together on this island rather than like a pastry school exercise.
Myrtle is the second thread and it comes from outside the pastry shop. Myrtus communis grows wild across the Sardinian macchia, and its blue black berries have been macerated in alcohol in island households for generations, with commercial bottling of mirto spreading widely only from the 1980s. It is the digestivo poured at the end of a Sardinian meal, aromatic, faintly resinous, with a bitterness behind the sweetness that stops it cloying. Carrying that flavour into a meringue means removing the alcohol first, because alcohol is exactly what a foam of egg white cannot tolerate. Reduced to a spoonful of dark syrup, myrtle keeps its perfume and loses its capacity to do damage, and the dessert ends up tasting of the island rather than of a liqueur bottle.
Ingredients
For the myrtle reduction
Mirto liqueur, Sardinian myrtle berry liqueur, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Dried myrtle berries, 1 tsp (2 g), optional
For the almonds
Whole blanched almonds, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
For the meringue
Egg whites, at room temperature, 5 1/4 oz (150 g), about 4 large
Superfine sugar, 10 1/2 oz (300 g)
Fresh lemon juice, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
For finishing
Finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
Dried myrtle berries, crushed, a very small pinch, optional
Preparation
Toast and chop the almonds
Heat the oven to 325°F (165°C). Spread the almonds on a small tray and toast them for 8 to 10 minutes, until they smell sweet and the cut surface is pale gold, never brown. Cool them completely, which takes about 20 minutes. Chop two thirds of them finely by hand and leave the last third in coarse pieces for the tops. Do not use a food processor: it releases oil, and oil is the single fastest way to kill a meringue.
Reduce the mirto
Put the mirto liqueur in the smallest saucepan you own with the optional dried berries and simmer it gently until only about 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of dark syrup remain. This takes 4 to 6 minutes over low heat. Strain out the berries and cool the syrup completely. It must be at room temperature before it meets the whites, because warm syrup slackens the foam and the alcohol that is left behind thins it further.
Set the oven and prepare the trays
Drop the oven to 200°F (95°C) and line two flat trays with parchment. Wipe the mixing bowl and the whisk with a little lemon juice on a paper towel and dry them, which removes any trace of fat left by previous use. Separate the eggs while they are cold, then let the whites stand until they reach room temperature, since cold whites whip slowly and to a smaller volume.
Whip the whites to soft peaks
Put the whites and the pinch of salt in the bowl and start on medium speed. When the surface turns to a uniform white foam with no loose liquid at the bottom, add the teaspoon of lemon juice and keep going until the whisk leaves a trail and a lifted peak flops over softly. Stop there. Whites taken to a stiff dry peak before the sugar goes in will break into granular clumps later and never come back.
Add the sugar in stages
With the machine on medium, add the superfine sugar one tablespoon at a time, waiting a few seconds between additions. This should take a full 6 to 8 minutes and it cannot be rushed. When all of it is in, raise to medium high and whip until the mass is dense, glossy and holds a straight peak. Test it by rubbing a little between finger and thumb: if you feel grains, the sugar has not dissolved and the meringue will weep syrup in the oven.
Fold in the mirto, zest and almonds
Add the cooled myrtle syrup and the lemon zest and fold three or four times only, cutting down through the centre with a spatula and lifting from the bottom. Add the finely chopped almonds and fold another three or four times. The mixture should look faintly streaked with rose rather than uniformly coloured. Every extra fold costs volume, and a meringue that has been stirred smooth will spread flat on the tray.
Shape the meringues
Use two dessert spoons to drop rough quenelles of about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) onto the parchment, leaving 1 inch (2.5 cm) between them. The irregular peaks and hollows are wanted: they are what give the finished shell its varied bite. Scatter the reserved coarse almonds over the tops, press them in very lightly, and add the tiny pinch of crushed myrtle berries if you are using it.
Dry them low and slow
Put both trays in the oven and dry for 2 hours at 200°F (95°C). Prop the oven door open a finger width with the handle of a wooden spoon so that the water driven off the meringues can escape instead of condensing back onto them. Do not raise the temperature to save time. Above roughly 230°F (110°C) the sugar begins to caramelise, the shells turn beige and the interiors stay tacky.
Cool in the turned off oven
Turn the oven off, open the door a hand width and leave the meringues inside for 45 minutes. This slow fall in temperature prevents the thermal shock that cracks a shell across the top and drops the centre. Test one when it is cold: it should lift cleanly off the parchment with a dry base and shatter under light pressure. If the base is still tacky, return the tray for 15 minute stretches.
Plating
Serve two or three meringues per person. A plain white plate or a piece of dark slate suits them better than anything decorative, because the meringues are already irregular and pale and need a flat background to read against. Pile them loosely rather than lining them up, and put them out at the last moment.
The best accompaniment is a spoonful of unsweetened sheep milk ricotta set beside them, which answers the sugar with something cool and lactic, plus a scrape of lemon zest over the top. A small glass of mirto served alongside closes the circle without putting more liquid on the plate. Never pour a sauce over a meringue: it goes soft within a minute and the entire point of two hours of drying is lost.
Professional Technique
The technical heart of this recipe is sugar dissolution, not whipping speed. A French meringue is stable only when every sugar crystal has gone into solution in the water of the egg white, and that happens through time and contact, not through force. Adding the sugar a spoonful at a time over 6 to 8 minutes gives each addition the chance to dissolve before the next arrives. Tip it in at once and the undissolved crystals draw water out of the protein network during drying, which is what produces the bead of amber syrup on the base of a failed meringue. The finger test is the only reliable check, and it takes two seconds.
The second technique is the conversion of a liqueur into a flavouring. Ethanol lowers the surface tension of the liquid film around each air bubble and destabilises the foam, so a tablespoon of mirto poured straight into the whites would visibly deflate them. Reducing 3 tablespoons down to 2 teaspoons drives off most of the alcohol and concentrates the aromatic compounds of the berry, so that a very small volume carries a large amount of flavour. The same logic applies to the fat in the almonds, which is why they go in chopped and cold at the very last fold, with as little contact time as possible before the tray goes into the oven.
Texture and Moisture Control
The target texture is a shell that shatters and a centre that is dry but still yields slightly, and it is controlled entirely by the ratio of sugar to white and by the oven. At 2 parts sugar to 1 part white by weight, 10 1/2 oz (300 g) to 5 1/4 oz (150 g), the meringue sets hard through. Cut the sugar and the shell becomes fragile and weeps; raise it and the result turns brittle and sandy. Keep the weights and weigh the whites rather than counting eggs, since large eggs vary by several grams.
Humidity is the real enemy, before and after the oven. Sugar is hygroscopic and pulls water out of the air, so meringues made on a wet day take longer to dry and soften faster afterwards. The propped oven door matters for the same reason: it gives the evaporating water somewhere to go. Once cold, the meringues must go straight into an airtight container, because an hour on an open rack in a humid kitchen is enough to turn a crisp shell chewy. If that happens they can be rescued with 20 minutes at 200°F (95°C) and a fresh cooling.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost everything here is done before the whisk starts turning, because once the whites are whipped the mixture has to reach the oven quickly. Work in this order and nothing waits.
Equipment and tools
Stand mixer with a whisk, or a hand mixer and a large bowl, metal or glass and never plastic
Digital scale, accurate to 1 gram, for the whites and the sugar
Smallest available saucepan and a fine mesh strainer for the myrtle reduction
Two flat baking trays, parchment paper, a flexible spatula and two dessert spoons
Oven thermometer, since domestic ovens rarely hold a true 200°F (95°C)
Prepared ahead
Myrtle reduction, up to 1 week ahead, kept covered at room temperature
Almonds toasted and chopped, up to 2 days ahead, stored airtight
Egg whites separated, up to 3 days ahead, refrigerated and brought to room temperature before use
Lemon zested on the day, kept covered so it does not dry out
Service setup
Trays lined and the oven already down at 200°F (95°C) before whipping begins
Sugar weighed into a bowl and within reach of the machine
Syrup, zest and almonds lined up in that order for the three folds
Airtight containers open and waiting for the moment the meringues are cold
Chef Tips
Taste the mirto before you reduce it. Bottlings vary a great deal, from sweet and soft to sharply resinous, and a very sweet commercial mirto will reduce to something closer to jam. If yours is sweet, reduce it a little less and stop at about 1 tablespoon (15 ml) rather than 2 teaspoons.
Weigh the egg whites. Four large whites can be anything from 4 1/2 to 6 oz, and the sugar ratio is what holds the whole recipe together. Two minutes with a scale removes the most common cause of a batch that never sets properly.
If a single drop of yolk lands in the whites, start again with that egg. Yolk is fat, and even a trace of it will keep the foam from reaching volume no matter how long the machine runs. Separate each egg into a small cup first and only then tip it into the main bowl.
Make them the day before you need them. A meringue dried one evening and left overnight in a sealed tin is drier, cleaner in texture and easier to handle than one made the same morning, and the myrtle aroma settles and becomes less sharp.
Common Mistakes
Pouring mirto straight into the whites. A tablespoon of liqueur carries both alcohol and water into a foam that tolerates neither, and the meringue loses a third of its volume within seconds. Reduce the liqueur first and cool it completely.
Adding the sugar too fast. Undissolved crystals draw moisture out of the protein network during drying and leak from the base of the meringue as sticky amber syrup. Add it one spoonful at a time and check between your fingers before you stop.
Raising the oven temperature to finish sooner. Above roughly 230°F (110°C) the sugar starts to colour and the surface sets before the centre has dried, giving a beige shell with a tacky interior. Hold 200°F (95°C) for the full 2 hours.
Grinding the almonds instead of chopping them. A processor releases almond oil, and fat is what destroys an egg white foam. Chop by hand, keep the pieces coarse and fold them in at the very end.
Cooling the meringues on the counter. The temperature drop cracks the shells and the humidity of the room begins softening them immediately. Cool them inside the switched off oven with the door ajar, then move them straight into an airtight tin.
Wine Pairing
Malvasia di Bosa DOC: The Sardinian answer, from the north west coast, aged oxidatively under a film of yeast until it tastes of bruised apple, dried almond and salt. That almond note runs straight into the toasted almonds in the meringue, and the oxidative bitterness stops the pairing turning into sugar on sugar.
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: A Tuscan alternative built for nuts and dry pastry, with dried apricot, caramel and walnut from long ageing in small casks. Its acidity is high enough to cut the sweetness of the meringue, and its own drying finish echoes the crisp shell rather than fighting it.
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: The lightest choice and the easiest to serve, gently frizzante, low in alcohol and full of orange blossom and white peach. Those floral aromatics sit beside the resinous myrtle without competing, and the bubbles clear the palate between one meringue and the next.
Colli Orientali del Friuli Picolit DOCG: For a very delicate pairing, since Picolit is a light bodied dessert wine of acacia honey, candied citrus and almond blossom rather than a heavy passito. Its restraint matters here: a meringue weighs almost nothing, and a dense raisined wine would flatten it.
Storage & Reheating
Store the meringues in an airtight tin at cool room temperature in a dry cupboard, in a single layer or separated by parchment, for up to 10 days. Do not refrigerate them under any circumstances: the refrigerator is a humid environment and the shells go chewy overnight. A small sachet of food safe silica gel or a folded paper towel in the tin helps in a damp kitchen.
They do not freeze usefully, since the condensation on thawing dissolves the surface sugar and leaves them sticky. If they have softened, spread them on a parchment lined tray and give them 20 minutes at 200°F (95°C), then cool them in the switched off oven with the door ajar exactly as after the first drying. Assembled plates with ricotta will not hold at all and must be built to order.
Nutrition
Per meringue, based on a yield of 24 pieces:
Calories: 78 kcal
Total Fat: 1.8 g
Saturated Fat: 0.1 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 1.6 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 18 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 14 g
Fiber: 0.3 g
Total Sugars: 13.5 g
Added Sugars: 12.5 g
Protein: 1.2 g
Lactose: 0 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin E, magnesium, riboflavin, manganese, selenium
These figures are estimates. They shift with the sweetness of the mirto used and with the exact size of each meringue, since a tray of 20 larger pieces raises every value by roughly a fifth.
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