To make a completely safe meringue with that many egg whites, Braun suggested a lower oven temperature and longer baking time than Myhre's. Myhre actually built her mile-high meringue with practical measure. When she made deep-dish custard pies with egg yolks, she had lots of whites left over. Meringues vary from a glamorous glace, served with ice cream, to Christmas meringue cookies, an insulating meringue that surrounds baked Alaska, and hard meringues that form delicate crusts, such as schaum torte, served with whipped cream and fruit. And, of course, there's the soft, homemade pie variety.
Science guides the texture of meringue.
The optimum condition for making meringue is dry air. Humidity or rain may cause the sugar to absorb moisture, resulting in a meringue with a sticky, spongy texture. The air bubbles create foam and increase the egg white's volume by six to eight times so it stands in peaks with the help of stabilizers, such as cream of tartar and sugar. Heating the foam through baking causes the tiny air cells to expand and the egg protein to coagulate around them. The whole process builds the meringue structure.