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Flavoring (Quart of rich yolk-of-egg)
1 quart of rich yolk-of-egg custard cold. Have a pan of boiling milk and water ready in the oven. Let the whites of eggs be cold to begin with. Whip them firm, add the sugar, then drop egg shaped portions with a wet spoon into the boiling milk and water, and let them cook a few minutes with the oven door open. They may either be turned over with a skimmer when half done or allowed to acquire some color on top like other meringues. If cooked too long these will shrink to almost nothing. Too much sugar likewise will spoil them. Serve them cold in a saucer of custard. These egg floats are very old favorites. They may be variously flavored, and may have an ounce of melted common chocolate mixed with the whites while beating to make chocolate float. 6. Make 2 quarts of boiled custard, set in the oven, after letting it cool a little, and drop meringue, the same that is spread over lemon pies, by spoonfuls all over the top. Let the meringue day bake with the oven door open 6 or 8 minutes, then set the pan away to get cold before serving. Dish up custard and a spoonful of the meringue in saucers. Care is required not to let the custard cook too much while the meringue is baking. The pan may be set in another pan of water not boiling.
Two versions of floating island: poached meringue ovals served in cold custard, and a whole pan of custard capped with baked meringue. The recipe assumes you already know how to make a boiled custard, so the arithmetic is left to you.
- The hinge: keep the poaching liquid below a boilDespite the wording, milk and water at a full rolling boil will tear the meringues apart and make them weep. Hold it at a bare shiver, around 170-180F, and the ovals set in two to four minutes a side.
- "With the oven door open"Leaving the door open was a way of moderating a range that had no thermostat. The recipe gives no temperature; the aim in both versions is to set or brown the meringue gently without letting the custard beneath cook, so keep the heat low and the door ajar as written.
- The custard is not given hereA rich yolk custard for this purpose runs about 8 yolks and 4-6 oz sugar to a quart of milk, cooked over water to 175-180F until it coats a spoon. It must be fully chilled before the meringues go on it.
- Sugar for the whites"Too much sugar likewise will spoil them" means the meringue turns syrupy and slumps in the poaching liquid. Keep the sugar modest, on the order of a tablespoon or two per white; the stiffer lemon-pie meringue of the second version can take a little more.
- Cold whitesThe recipe calls for cold whites to begin with. Room-temperature whites in fact whip to greater volume; what matters more is that the bowl and beaters are free of any trace of fat or yolk.
- "Common chocolate"In American cookbooks of this period that means plain unsweetened cake chocolate, not a sweetened eating bar. Use unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled to barely warm, or the whites will collapse when you fold it in.
- ShrinkageOvercooked poached meringue does shrink to almost nothing, as stated, because the protein tightens and drives out water. Pull them while they still feel springy rather than firm.
- YieldA quart of custard with meringues serves six to eight in saucers; the second version, on two quarts, serves twelve to sixteen. Both are served cold and do not hold well past the day they are made.
Floating island is a dessert name of long standing in English cookery, though it has meant several different things. Eighteenth-century English and colonial receipts for "floating island" often described whipped cream or syllabub heaped on wine or cream, with no meringue at all; the version here, poached egg-white ovals adrift in a vanilla custard, is essentially the French oeufs a la neige, and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks used the two names more or less interchangeably. Jessup Whitehead wrote The American Pastry Cook for hotel and restaurant kitchens rather than households, which explains the scale of two quarts of custard at a time and the second method's approach: one pan, baked once, portioned into saucers as the orders come in. His remark that "these egg floats are very old favorites" was accurate even then, and the dish had the further virtue, in a professional kitchen, of using up the whites left over from a custard made rich with yolks.