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Dessert

Floating Island

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the cream base

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

Make the froth

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

  2. Gradually mix in the apple pulp and beat until you have a large quantity of froth.

Serve

  1. Serve the froth on top of the cream or on a custard, colored with jelly if desired.

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. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Wine + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  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

Thin cream
Forms the rich, smooth base that the light froth sits on.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they create the light, airy structure of the froth.
Apple pulp
Adds body and flavor to the froth and helps it hold its foamy texture.
Raisin wine
Adds fruity, sweet-wine flavor to the cream base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Egg whites must be beaten to a foam that traps air; under-beaten whites stay runny and won't hold up the froth, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, lemon, orange, sugar, egg, apple. 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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