Name: Floating Island
Ingredients: 1 ½ cups thin cream; ⅓ cup raisin wine; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 teaspoon orange-flower water; sugar to taste; raspberry or currant jelly for froth

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

Mix the whipped cream, raisin wine, lemon juice, orange-flower water, and sugar in a bowl.
Pour the mixture into a serving dish for the table.
Top the cream with a froth made from raspberry or currant jelly.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Orange + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together521 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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: Whipped to form the light, airy body of the dessert.
Raisin wine: Adds sweetness and fruity flavor to the cream.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream.
Raspberry or currant jelly: Forms the sweet, fruity froth that tops the cream.

Swap the raisin

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

Blackberryfits better
Vanillafits better
Peachfits better
Raisinthe original

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