On Food and Cooking

the whites should be large enough to
accommodate an eightfold expansion of their
volume. It’s often recommended that the cook
avoid making egg foams in plastic bowls,
because plastics are hydrocarbon relatives of
fats, and tend to retain traces of fats and
soaps. While this is true, the bowl is also
unlikely to release such traces into a mass of
egg white. Ordinary cleaning is adequate to
make a plastic bowl suitable for foaming
eggs.
If you’re beating by hand, a large “balloon
whisk” aerates a greater volume of the egg
whites at a time and will speed your work. If
you have a choice of machines, a stand mixer
whose beater both spins on its shaft and traces
a curlicue path from the center to the edge of
the bowl (a “hypocycloidal” or planetary
motion) beats the whites more evenly and
leaves less unfoamed. Less efficient beaters
produce a denser texture.