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Dessert

Floating Islands

A custard base topped with meringue islands and bright jelly garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Floating Islands

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of five eggs and the whites of two eggs until light.

  2. Add five tablespoons of sugar and flavor to taste.

  3. Stir the mixture into a quart of scalded milk and cook until it thickens.

  4. Once cool, pour the custard into a glass dish.

Make and cook the islands

  1. Whip the three remaining egg whites to a stiff froth, adding three tablespoons of sugar and a little flavoring.

  2. Pour the froth over a shallow dish of boiling water to cook it with steam.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the froth over the custard, spacing them apart to form islands.

  4. Garnish each island with a teaspoonful of bright jelly for a pleasing effect.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and give it richness and color.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff froth that forms the light, airy islands.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue froth and helps the whites hold their structure.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, which sets as it cooks and cools.

The step that matters

Cooking the meringue islands with steam. The froth must be cooked just until set, not browned or collapsed. Gentle steam heats the foam evenly so it firms without drying or weeping, and spooning it onto the custard only after it has cooled keeps the islands from sinking or melting into the custard.

“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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