bubbles are broken into smaller and smaller bubbles,
becoming so small that they are nearly invisible to the
naked eye and thus the whites appear smooth and white,
like shaving cream. When pulled into peaks, they remain
stiff and solid.- Breakdown and weeping: Keep going past the stiff-peak
stage, and the proteins begin to bond so tightly with each
other that they squeeze the moisture right out of the
bubbles, resulting in a meringue that weeps and breaks.
Acidic ingredients like cream of tartar or a touch of lemon
juice can prevent egg white proteins from bonding too
tightly, allowing you to form a foam that stays stable no
matter how hard you beat it.
Add sugar and vanilla to the whites at the soft-peak stage,
whip to stiff peaks, drop by the spoonful onto baking sheets,
and bake at a low temperature, and you’ve got yourself
classic meringue cookies. If you instead drizzle in a cooked
sugar syrup toward the end of whipping, you’ll end up with
what’s called an Italian meringue, a meringue that stays soft
and supple even when browned—the kind of thing you’d
want to top a lemon meringue pie with.
Here the use for meringue is much more simple: all
you’re going to do is fold it into the pancake batter. The
extra air that the egg whites have incorporated expands as
the pancakes cook, making them featherlight.