Strawberry Eton mess

Plan a week with British dishes

Let's cook

1. Hull the strawberries (pull or cut out the green tops). Keep 4 small ones whole for the top and cut the rest into quarters.
2. Put a third of the quartered strawberries in a bowl with the sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice and mash them with a fork into a rough pink sauce. Stir in the rest of the quartered strawberries and leave for 5 minutes for the juices to run.
3. Pour the cream into a large bowl, add the vanilla and whisk with an electric or hand whisk until it holds soft peaks: when you lift the whisk, the cream stands up in a peak that flops over at the tip. Stop there, as cream whisked too far turns grainy.
4. Break the meringue nests into rough chunks with your fingers, some the size of a grape and some smaller, straight into the cream.
5. Spoon in most of the strawberries and their juice and fold everything together with 2 or 3 big, slow turns of a large spoon, so you get ripples of pink through the white. Do not overmix: it should be streaky, not pink all over.
6. Spoon into 4 glasses or bowls. Top with the last of the strawberries and their juice, a whole strawberry and a mint leaf, if using. Serve within 15 minutes, before the meringue softens.

Tips

• Put it together at the last minute: the meringue melts into the cream if it waits.
• Out of season, use thawed frozen raspberries, which hold their flavour better than winter strawberries.

Swaps

• Lighter: use half double cream and half thick Greek yoghurt (still contains milk).
• Vegan: use a plant cream that whips, or thick coconut yoghurt, with vegan meringues made from aquafaba (the liquid in a tin of chickpeas). Check the packets for soya.

More in the British meal plan

Our own recipe. The photograph is AI-generated.