meringue
n. C / Un. a sweet, light dessert made from whipped egg whites and sugar. It can be soft and fluffy or baked until it is hard and crunchy.
n. a dessert or topping made from whipped egg whites, sugar, and sometimes air. It exists in two primary forms: soft, uncooked meringue, and hard, baked meringue.
She topped the hot chocolate with a soft meringue.
The baker carefully folded the egg whites into the batter to ensure the meringue would be light and airy.
While soft meringue is often piped onto desserts like pies, hard meringue requires precise temperature control during the baking process to achieve its characteristic crisp texture and glossy finish.
Borrowed from French meringue. Historically, it was believed that meringue was invented in and named for the Swiss village of Meiringen, but the term is now thought to derive instead from Middle Dutch meringue (“light evening meal”), of unclear origin: * perhaps from Latin merenda (“light evening meal”), or perhaps from Middle Dutch meren (“to dip or soak bread”), from Old Dutch *meren, itself of unclear origin: * perhaps from Proto-Germanic marjaną (“to grind, pound”), from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to rub, pack”). * perhaps from Proto-Germanic marhin (“soup of bread and wine or water”), from Proto-Indo-European mark-, merk- (“wet”). Compare Middle Low German meringe (from mern (“to dip bread in wine”)), Middle High German merunge (from mëren (“to soak bread in wine or water for dinner”)), Old English merian (“to purify, cleanse, test”). Doublet of merengue.