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Dessert

Floating Island

A dessert of lemon zest cream, Madeira wine, and sugar topped with meringue, currant jelly, calf's foot jelly, and candied sweetmeats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Floating Island

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the lemon into a bowl of cream.

  2. Add the Madeira wine and sweeten with granulated sugar.

  3. Whip the mixture with a chocolate mill until frothy.

  4. Let the froth drain overnight in a sieve.

Assemble and set

  1. In a deep glass dish, place the Naples biscuit in the center.

  2. Beat the egg white until frothy and dip the myrtle sprig in it.

  3. Place the myrtle sprig in the Naples biscuit.

  4. Spread currant jelly over the froth and slice it thinly.

  5. Pour thick calf's foot jelly over the top until it looks like glass.

  6. Let it cool and set until firm.

  7. Decorate the top with rock candied sweetmeats and green sprigs.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped into a froth that forms the light, airy body of the dish.
Egg white
Whipped to a foam that adds lightness and helps the myrtle sprig adhere.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cream mixture and adds body to the froth.
Madeira wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the cream mixture.
Calf's foot jelly
Sets into a clear, firm glaze over the top of the dish.

The step that matters

Pour thick calf's foot jelly over the top. The jelly must be thick enough to form a clear, glass-like layer rather than sinking into the froth. Gelatin sets as it cools, so it should be allowed to cool to a suitable thickness before the dish is left to set firmly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cream, madeira wine, sugar, biscuit, egg, myrtle):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cream, madeira wine, sugar, biscuit, egg, myrtle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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