Skip to main content

Floating Island with Strawberry Coulis and Summer Fruit

These pretty floating island desserts sit delicately on a summer fruit coulis rather than a traditional crème anglaise.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream cheese and melon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 7 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 6
Prep1 hr
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cream cheese + melontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + cream cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vanilla + melontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cream cheese + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the pistachio

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream cheese, sugar, lemon, egg, vanilla, melon):

  1. Pecansbetter flavor fit
  2. Almondbetter flavor fit
  3. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Pistachiothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream cheese, sugar, lemon, egg, vanilla, melon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).