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Dessert

A Floating Island

A dessert of frothy egg whites atop thickened cream, finished with small comfits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and tea work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 463 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

A Floating Island

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg whites

  1. Beat the egg whites in a large basin until very frothy.

Make the cream base

  1. Pour a little strong balm tea into a pint of cream.

  2. Add enough rennet to thicken the cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lay the froth of egg whites on top of the cream mixture.

  2. Strew small comfits on top.

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. Cream + teatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Currant + teatop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, airy topping of the dish.
Cream
Forms the rich, creamy base that the egg white froth sits on.
Rennet
Causes the cream to thicken and set into a soft custard-like base.
Strong balm tea
Adds a light herbal flavour to the cream base.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until very frothy. Egg whites must be whipped to a stable foam, trapping air in the proteins, so the froth holds its shape when laid on the cream instead of collapsing into it.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, tea. 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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