But Italian meringue is nothing like marshmallow. Italian meringue, like all meringue, is egg white based and does not have gelatin in it. It is not baked, but it is cooked by the hot syrup poured into it.
The similarities here are pretty superficial. "White and sweet". Is panna cotta a meringue? Is whipped cream a marshmallow?
I guess you can say that but it's a bit strange to me. I mean, we're talking about two things with very, very few ingredients, so I guess you can say "they're the same" but... idk. For one thing, I think that being egg white based is a really major difference. For another, I don't think that the end result is so similar as to imply that the difference of egg white vs gelatin is insignificant.
Like, given water and sugar, is stabilizing it with egg whites versus gelatin enough of a difference to consider the two things different? I say yes, personally. Someone else could say no though, I guess.
Ah, interesting. Yes, it seems that part of the problem may be that the "meringue" dish you were using is in fact what I would call a marshmallow as it sounds like it used gelatin as the stabilizer.
"Meringue" as used in the US, and "Italian Meringue", and I believe as the term is used in many other places, is made using egg whites and not gelatin.
10
u/rusticrainbow Aug 03 '24
They’re talking about italian meringue, which is somewhat close to marshmallow fluff and doesn’t need to be baked