Meringue Making

1 - Eggs foam at 70 degrees F

2 - Mild Acids Aid in foaming
Acid in forms of cream of tartar, lime or lemon juice or vinegar will do. There’s no need to add acid to the recipe, wiping the bowl with vinegar to clean it is good enough.

Cream of Tartar is a by product of the fermentation process of tannin scraped out of oak barrels. It feels really really dry to the mouth. It taste like dry acid. Well, it IS dry acid.

3 - Fat inhibits foaming
Ensure that the bowl to be used is clean. Any amount of fat left on the bowl may inhibit foaming. Egg yolks contain fat too so the mixing bowl as well as the separated egg whites should be free of any remnants of egg yolks

Ensure also that in separating eggs, especially in bigger batches, clean hands are used instead of the egg shells because salmonella resides in the egg shells

4 - Sugar stabilizes egg foams
Sugar functions as stiffener, stabilizer and preservative in meringue

5 - Do not over-whip
Over-whipping the egg whites causes synersis, also known as curdling. This is the point at which protein strands are stretched too much and they begin snapping. The protein web is broken and the water stored in each protein cell walls are released producing a liquid mixture that resembles curds and whey.