Name: Floating Island
Ingredients: calf's-foot jelly; medium-sized turnip; gum-water or egg white; green shot comfits; myrtle sprig or other green sprig; sheep or swan decorations; green leaf or apple paste

Why it works: Turnip and apple work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

Break the set calf's-foot jelly slightly without making it frothy.
Rub the turnip with gum-water or egg white.
Coat the turnip thickly with green shot comfits and place a sprig of myrtle on top.
Surround the turnip with the broken jelly.
Decorate with sheep or swan figures, using a green leaf or apple paste to stabilize them.

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.

Turnip + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Myrtle + appletop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Egg + appletop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,461 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,077 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Egg + myrtletop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together41 recipes