Skip to main content
Dessert

Floating Island of Fresh

A dessert of strawberry custard topped with meringue peaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Floating Island of Fresh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Crush the strawberries and strain the juice.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding ½ cup sugar.

  2. Mix in the strawberry juice and beat until it forms peaks.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks, milk, and the remaining ½ cup sugar to make a custard.

  2. Pour the custard into a glass dish.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Assemble

  1. Layer the crushed strawberries on top of the custard.

  2. Add the meringue in peaks.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Whites whip into the foam of the meringue, and yolks thicken the custard as they set.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavor, acidity, and moisture to the juice and the topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, which sets when the egg proteins coagulate.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Sugar added gradually dissolves into the whites and stabilizes the foam. Stop at stiff peaks, since overbeating makes the meringue dry and grainy and it can weep.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes