Why it works: Milk and egg 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
Ingredients
Directions
Poach the meringue
Heat the sweet milk in a double boiler over hot water.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and lay them on the milk until cooked.
Remove the cooked egg whites to a platter.
Make the custard
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.
Pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture to prevent curdling.
Stir until cooked through, then turn into a custard dish.
Assemble and serve
Place the cooked egg whites on top.
Serve with a bit of jelly on each dish.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Egg whites
- Whipped into stiff foam that cooks into soft, light floating islands.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the milk into a custard as they cook gently with the sugar.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard that the islands float on.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the yolks while they are beaten.
The step that matters
Pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture to prevent curdling. Adding hot milk to yolks slowly, while whisking, gently raises their temperature so they thicken smoothly. Dumping them in together can scramble the yolks into lumps.
“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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