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Dessert

Apple Floating Island

Dessert of baked apples served atop custard or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apple pulp

  1. Bake or scald the apples until cool, then peel and pulp them through a sieve.

  2. Mix the apple pulp with fine sugar.

Make the float

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little rose water until light.

  2. Combine the egg whites with the apple mixture gradually, beating until fluffy.

  3. Heap the mixture on top of a rich custard or jelly.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  2. Apple + rosetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  5. Egg + rosetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and fruity flavour of the pulp that forms the base of the dessert.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and helps stabilise the whipped mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the mixture and give the float its fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into the apple mixture. Folding the whites in gradually keeps the air bubbles they hold intact. Adding them all at once or overbeating can deflate the foam, leaving a dense, flat float instead of a light, fluffy one.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, rose. 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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