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Floating Island
One quart milk, five eggs, one teaspoon corn starch, put the milk in a skillet over the fire, and when it commences to boil have the whites of three of the eggs beaten very light, and drop them on the boiling milk for two or three minutes, then skim them off and take the two remaining eggs and the three yolks beaten together with one cup sugar and the corn starch, mix with the boiling milk which must be placed in a Farina kettle and stir constantly until it is about as thick as cream. Flavor with vanilla, and put the floating island on top.
A stirred custard with poached meringues, written for a cook who already knew how a boiled custard behaves. The instructions are sound; only the vessels and a few unstated cues need translating.
- Farina kettleA double boiler — the inner pan of a cereal cooker set over simmering water. Use a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, or a heavy saucepan over low heat if you are willing to stir attentively.
- The skilletWhatever the period pan, it is used here simply as a wide poaching surface. A 10-inch saute pan or a wide saucepan gives the meringues room to float without touching.
- The hinge: do not let the custard boilOnce the yolks go in, hold the mixture below a simmer and stir constantly. It is done at about 175°F, when it coats the back of a spoon; a boil scrambles it. Straining through a fine sieve afterwards catches anything that has set.
- Temper the eggsThe original says to mix the beaten eggs with the boiling milk, which invites curdling if done all at once. Whisk a ladleful of the hot milk into the eggs first, then return everything to the double boiler.
- Poaching the meringuesBeat the three whites to firm peaks — a spoonful of the sugar helps them hold — and drop them in generous spoonfuls onto milk held at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil. Two to three minutes is right; they should feel set and springy, and they will deflate somewhat as they cool.
- CornstarchOne teaspoon in a quart is insurance against curdling rather than a thickener. Whisk it into the sugar before it meets the eggs so it does not lump.
- VanillaAdd it off the heat. Extract driven off by prolonged heat loses most of its aroma.
- Serving and yieldPour into a shallow glass dish or individual cups, and float the meringues on top just before serving so they do not weep. A quart of milk should serve roughly six to eight.
Floating island — île flottante in French, and often called oeufs à la neige, the two names being used more or less interchangeably in practice — was one of the most persistent desserts in nineteenth-century American household books. English cookery is generally said to have had a grander version in the eighteenth century, sometimes a construction of layered cake, jelly and cream, but by the time this book was printed the name almost always meant what it means here, a soft boiled custard with poached meringue floating on it. The instruction to finish it in a farina kettle is a small period detail worth noticing: the double boiler is usually thought to have been becoming standard equipment in American kitchens as ranges replaced open hearths, and recipes increasingly seem to assume one.