Ongoing culinary one-upmanship

[kaberett]

A messaged me in great excitement, the other weekend, to tell me that he'd had afternoon tea somewhere that had given him basil-flavoured meringue that didn't have green bits in, and he wasn't sure how they'd done it, but it was Tasty and A Friend.

They'll have infused either the sugar or the egg white with basil, I said, and it was probably the egg white.

I am pleased to report that infusing the egg whites with basil -- separating your whites from your yolks, then leaving them in the fridge overnight with some lightly crushed basil leaves dropped in with them -- does in fact give you basil-flavoured meringue. But, er, you really don't need much basil -- two leaves would probably have been plenty sufficient for my five egg whites, and as it is they're a little assertive -- but hey, basil-meringue strawberry Eton mess. \o/

(You can of course also just chop some basil up very finely and add it to your meringue mix right before shaping the meringues and putting them in to bake, but that wasn't the spec so it isn't what I did. ;) )

Comments

[kaberett]

Hee, I am delighted to have been of use :D

I actually didn't know either until I'd tried it, but I was pretty sure that infusing egg white with basil would work better than infusing sugar with basil (unlike infusing sugar with vanilla/lavender/chamomile etc, and I was therefore pretty sure that infusing the egg white would be how the restaurant in question had done it), and having demonstrated that the principle is sound I'm pretty cheerful about the prospect of similar approaches to other flavours...

[redsixwing]

\o/

Your thoughts about basil-lemon meringue pie sound pretty amazing. I make a pretty mean lemon meringue, so I may have to try that.

Okay. Egg white is mostly water, with some protein and not much fat in it, right? So any herb that can infuse in cold water should also infuse egg white, and those that do better in oil would do less well.

...which actually makes me think, what about infused egg yolk?

For different dishes, but that sounds delicious.

[kaberett]

Ah now that as I understand it takes you into the land of flavoured mayonnaises, which are truly an abomination unto nuggan :-p

[redsixwing]

Oh dear. No, paths ending in mayonnaise are not my preferred sort of path. D:

I'm a lousy Nugganite, but even I can agree on mayonnaises.

[fyreharper]

Of course it is an abomination, it's made of mayo :nosewrinkle: