Name: Floating Island
Ingredients: 3 ½ pints thin cream; ¼ pint raisin wine; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 tablespoon orange-flower water; sugar to taste; raspberry or currant jelly for froth; 2 egg whites; 1 tablespoon orange-flower water for froth; 1 sharp apple (codlin or similar)

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 cream, raisin wine, lemon juice, orange-flower water, and sugar in a dish.
Prepare a froth using raspberry or currant jelly as directed in a subsequent recipe.
Scald the apple, then pulp it through a sieve.
Beat the egg whites with sugar and a tablespoon of orange-flower water.
Gradually mix in the apple pulp and beat until frothy.
Serve the froth on raspberry cream or color it with beetroot or jelly.
Flavor the froth with lemon, sugar, and wine 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.

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

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Blackberryfits better
Peachfits better
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.