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Dessert

Lemon Floating Island

A lemon custard topped with whipped egg whites and pistachio nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Lemon Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Combine lemon juice and egg yolks in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over low heat until thickened.

  3. Pour the mixture into a glass dish.

Top and serve

  1. Whisk egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix saccharin into the whipped egg whites.

  3. Pile the whipped egg whites on top of the lemon mixture.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped pistachio nuts for decoration.

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.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the lemon mixture as they cook; whites whip into a light foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and tart flavour to the custard.
Saccharin
Adds sweetness to the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk and lemon mixture over low heat. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the yolks or leave the mixture lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pistachio, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pistachio, nuts. 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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