Why it works: White wine and apple work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓
Floating Island
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the base
Dip the ratafia biscuits in white wine and arrange them in the center of a round deep dish.
Prepare a weak calf's foot jelly and pour it around the biscuits until the dish is almost full.
Make the apple layer
Roast the apples until soft, then peel and remove the pulp.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and mix with the apple pulp, adding the sugar and lemon zest.
Heap the apple mixture on top of the biscuits, avoiding contact with the jelly.
Top with red currant
Whip the second set of egg whites to stiff peaks, then mix in the red currant jelly until thick and pale pink.
Spoon the red currant mixture over the apples.
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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White wine + appletop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together372 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,832 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Biscuit + red curranttop 11% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together30 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together309 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together697 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the apple and currant toppings a light, airy, foamy structure.
- Ratafia biscuits
- Soaked in wine, they soften and form the moist, flavourful base under the topping.
- Apples
- Roasted and pulped, they supply the bulk and soft, sweet flavour of the apple layer.
- Red currant jelly
- Folded into whipped whites, it adds tart fruit flavour and a pale pink colour to the top layer.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the apple-egg white mixture and helps stabilise the whipped foam.
The step that matters
Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Under-whipped whites will deflate and make the topping runny, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry. Stiff, glossy peaks hold the light foam together when folded with the fruit.
Swap the red currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, white wine, apple, egg, sugar, lemon):
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Orangefits better
- Red currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, white wine, apple, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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