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To Make Floating Islands

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Floating Islands

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the sharp apples, then pulp them through a sieve.

  2. Beat the egg whites with sugar and orange flower water.

  3. Gradually mix the egg white mixture with the apple pulp and beat together.

  4. Serve the mixture on raspberry cream or color the froth with beetroot, raspberry, or currant jelly.

  5. You can also set it on a lemon-flavored custard.

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.

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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Orange + beetroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + raspberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, egg, orange, raspberry, cream, beetroot):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, egg, orange, raspberry, cream, beetroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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