Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Floating Island
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Bring the mock cream to a boil.
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Spoon the egg whites into the scalding cream, turning them over to set the eggs.
Remove the egg whites and place them in a dish.
Thicken the cream with the thin white flour batter until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.
Strain the mixture, then add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, and cold milk to prevent curdling.
Stir briskly and let cool.
Flavor with lemon and add a pinch of salt.
Serve
Serve in a large glass dish or individual glasses, topping with the reserved egg whites.
Sprinkle colored sugar on top if desired.
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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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 set into soft puffs that float on the cream, while yolks enrich and thicken the custard.
- Thin white flour batter
- Starch thickens the hot cream to a thick, spoonable consistency as it cooks.
- Mock cream
- Forms the creamy base that the custard is built on and flavoured from.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the custard.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks with cold milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble when they meet hot cream. Straining first and adding the yolks with cold milk cools the mixture and helps keep it smooth.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, flour, sugar, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, flour, sugar, milk. 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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