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Dessert

Floating Island

A dessert of calf's-foot jelly and coated turnip, garnished with myrtle sprig and decorative figures.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Floating Island

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

Prepare the island

  1. Rub the turnip with gum-water or egg white.

  2. Coat the turnip thickly with green shot confections.

  3. Place a sprig of myrtle on top of the turnip.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Break the set calf's-foot jelly slightly, avoiding froth.

  2. Surround the turnip with the broken jelly.

  3. Decorate with sheep or swan figures, using green leaves or apple peels 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.

  1. Turnip + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Myrtle + appletop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Egg + appletop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + myrtletop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together41 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's-foot jelly
Forms the set jelly base that surrounds the turnip and gives the dish its structure.
Gum-water or egg white
Acts as a sticky coating so the green shot confections adhere to the turnip.
Green shot confections
Coats the turnip to give it a green, textured appearance.

The step that matters

Break the set calf's-foot jelly slightly, avoiding froth. Breaking the jelly gently keeps it in irregular pieces without whipping air into it. Froth would cloud the clear jelly and make it harder to arrange around the turnip.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, myrtle, apple):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, myrtle, apple. 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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