Italian meringue Flaw

[MitroP]

I made a batch of macarons, and the end result of the italian meringue wasn't decent. It was soupy.
I noticed that the mixture didn't foam quite well (i selected to whisk it on an uneven bowl) so when i added the syrup and whisked it vigorously it didnt end up as a nice,creamy with a big bulk meringue. So the conclusion is that if the meringue is not foamy at first, the addition of the syrup will be destructive for the outcome? At the end of the day, why do the recipes call for a foamy meringue before adding the hot syrup? I cant think of any other reason to cause this failure.


By the way, i figured out that the macaron mixture needs to be over-folded so i continued as usual. The end result was acceptable, but some pieces had cracks (the size was small and they had formed a skin before baking).

 

[dueh]

When egg whites are whipped, the eggs’ proteins unfold and then cross-link to form a network that stabilizes the air bubbles. At the same time, the sugar dissolves in the water from the eggs to form a viscous liquid that helps stabilize the structure. If the sugar is added too early, the sugar granules interfere with the proteins’ ability to unfold, resulting in a weaker network that can only support small air bubbles (this is why these cakes and meringues had a finer interior texture). If the sugar is added too late, either the sugar, which is hygroscopic, draws water out of the foam and causes the structure to weaken (as in the dense, crumbly cakes), or the sugar doesn’t fully dissolve (as in the meringue cookies that were grainy and brown from undissolved sugar caramelizing). Adding the sugar after a brief amount of whipping gives the protein network time to form while leaving enough time for the sugar to dissolve.​

Taken from a cooks illustrated article i had come across recently about meringue

So, with your italian meringue, the sugar has already dissolved with the cooked syrup, the syrup is there to stabilize and add structure to the egg whites as the sugar is cooling down.

 

[MitroP]

Thank you dueh for your explanation. Maybe the syrup was added earlier than properly.