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Dessert

Floating Island

A dessert of whipped cream with fruit pulp and froth, topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Floating Island

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the cream, raisin wine, lemon juice, orange flower water, and sugar in a dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites with sugar and 1 tablespoon of orange flower water until frothy.

  3. Mix in the pulp of a scalded codling or sharp apple gradually until well combined.

  4. Serve the froth on top of the cream.

  5. Color it with jelly and serve on a white cream or custard.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the light, floating texture of the froth.
Thin cream
Forms the rich, smooth base that the froth sits on.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet cream and balances its richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Egg whites hold air through their proteins, and that foam gives the froth its light texture. Beating too little leaves it dense and runny, while beating too long can make it dry and grainy and cause it to collapse.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, wine, lemon, orange, sugar, raspberry, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, lemon, orange, sugar, raspberry, 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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