Meringues
Also known as: Merengues · Meringues · Meringue kisses
Clouds of egg white and sugar that crackle lightly and melt on the tongue.
- Origin
- Egg-white sweet · across the country
- Region
- Nationwide
- Season
- Year-round
Suspiros are almost nothing and almost everything: egg whites whipped to stiff peaks with sugar, piped into little mounds and dried in a low oven until they form a fragile shell over a centre that collapses to powder. Just two ingredients, but ones that demand a steady hand and patience.
The name says exactly what they are — light as a sigh. They turn up from north to south, snow-white or tinted pink and chocolate, in pastry-shop windows, at fairs and on every celebration tray across the country.
- egg whites
- sugar
- a pinch of salt
- lemon zest (optional)
Very sweet and purely sugary, with a shell that snaps at the first bite and a light, airy inside that dissolves almost at once. With no fat at all, it leaves the mouth clean and dry.
There are suspiros as small as a kiss and others as big as a bread roll; white, pink, cocoa-streaked or scented with vanilla and lemon. In Águeda they count among the town's typical sweets; elsewhere they form the base of larger desserts, filled or crowned with cream.
In almost any traditional pastry shop, and at fairs and village festivals nationwide. Águeda counts them among its typical sweets. The best are made the same day and crisp — they hate humid weather, which turns them soft.
A strong coffee or an espresso to cut the sweetness; or crumbled over ice cream and fruit.
The meringue — egg white and sugar whipped and dried in the oven — most likely emerged somewhere in Europe, probably in northern Italy, Switzerland or France, and Portuguese dictionaries record the word «suspiro» as a synonym for meringue from the 19th century.
In Portugal it put down roots of its own in convent baking. Convents used vast quantities of egg yolks in their famous egg sweets, which left whites to spare. Whipping those whites with sugar and drying them in the oven turned a surplus into something economical and delicate. From there they spread across the whole country and became a staple of both the pastry shop and the home kitchen, with versions in nearly every region.
Sources: pt.wikipedia.org · pt.wikipedia.org · docesportugueses.com