Skip to main content
Dessert

Floating Island

A dessert of gelatin, sugar, egg whites, lemon, custard, and currant jelly, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Floating Island

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 lemon jelly

  1. Soak gelatine in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add sugar to the gelatine mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  5. Fold in beaten egg whites, lemon juice, and rind.

  6. Pour mixture into a mold.

  7. Refrigerate until set.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk egg yolks with milk and corn starch.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Cook until thickened.

Make the island and serve

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add currant jelly and powdered sugar, beating until stiff.

  3. Chill the mixture thoroughly on ice.

  4. Serve the jelly mixture in a glass dish half filled with cold milk, topped with peaks of the island.

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.

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the lemon mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the light, airy structure of the island.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard through gentle heat-setting of their proteins.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it holds body when cooked.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the stiffly beaten meringue.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat egg whites until stiff. Egg whites hold air only when fully whipped and free of fat or yolk; under-beaten or greasy whites collapse, and folding in jelly or sugar too early deflates the foam, so the island loses its height.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More floating island recipes

Apple 3Strawberry 3 See all 214 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes