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Dessert

Floating Island with Guava Jelly

A dessert of cold milk custard with whipped egg whites and guava jelly pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and guava work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Floating Island with Guava Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  3. Stir the beaten yolks into the hot milk and set the mixture on ice.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cold, fold in the whipped egg whites and the guava jelly cut into fine pieces.

  2. Serve when very cold.

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 + guavatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  5. Sugar + guavatop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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, which thickens as it cools.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites make the light floating topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the egg flavour.
Guava jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and flavour in fine pieces folded through the dessert.

The step that matters

Chill the custard completely before folding in the whites. Whipped egg whites deflate quickly in warm liquid, so the custard must be cold first. Cooling also lets the yolk custard thicken enough to hold the light whites in place.

Swap the guava

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Guavathe original

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