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Dessert

Floating Island

A dessert of whipped cream with a frothy apple or codlin topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the cream

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

Make the froth

  1. For the froth, scald the codlin or sharp apple, then pulp it through a sieve.

  2. Beat the egg whites with sugar and 1 tablespoon of orange flower water, then gradually mix in the apple pulp and beat until frothy.

Serve

  1. Serve the froth on raspberry cream or a custard.

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, liquid base that the light froth sits on.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the froth its light, airy structure.
Codlin or sharp apple
Its pulp adds tartness and body to the froth.
Raisin wine
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the cream base.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites with the apple pulp. Egg whites foam best when beaten clean and free of fat, and the acidic apple pulp is added gradually so the foam stays stable rather than collapsing.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, raisin, wine, lemon, orange, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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