Pastry, Cakes & Desserts
The supplied abstracts do not directly study shell cracking. They suggest that cracking may be related to a meringue foam structure that is insufficiently stable during heating and solidification: unstable bubbles or weak foam can lose structural integrity as the meringue dries and expands. Factors reported to affect this structure include sucrose level, egg-white foam stability, storage-related changes in albumen, and yolk contamination.
The closest evidence is a whey-protein meringue study reporting that sugar concentration affected foam stability, rheology, and air-bubble stabilization during solidification. It found that 10% sucrose was most effective for stabilizing bubbles, while 15% was detrimental to several foam properties. Separate egg-white research indicates that yolk contamination greatly inhibits stable, voluminous foams, while egg storage conditions can reduce albumen foaming ability and foam stability. These findings support foam weakness or instability as a plausible contributor to cracking, but the abstracts do not establish the exact cause of cracks or distinguish cracking from other defects such as collapse, roughness, or shrinkage.
Answer last checked 2026-08-19T02:41:46.230Z. Answerlog reads titles and abstracts, not full papers, and does not assess study quality or claim consensus.