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Dessert

Floating Islands

A custard topped with stiffly beaten egg whites, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Floating Islands

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  4. Add the egg mixture and corn starch to the boiling milk, stirring briskly until it thickens.

  5. Pour the mixture into an earthen dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and spoon them onto the custard.

  2. Place the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly browned.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens when heated.
Yolks of 5 eggs
Enrich and thicken the custard as their proteins set with heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard by swelling in hot liquid.
Whites of 5 eggs
Whipped into a stiff froth, they form the light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the yolks blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard until it thickens. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil and be stirred constantly so its granules swell evenly; otherwise the custard can lump, scorch on the bottom, or stay thin.

“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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