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Floating Islands
A good general bill of fare name for a number of useful trifles cold for dessert that are alike only in being something afloat in a sauce. 1. "Whipped Syllabub" or "Trifle:" An ornamental bowl of whipped cream flavored with wine, with a cake in it. 3 pints of sweet cream. 8 ounces of sugar. 1 cupful of madeira or raisin wine 2 thin jelly cakes size of saucers.
Put the jelly cakes in 2 glass bow's Whip the sweetened and flavored cream with a whip-churn till half of it is froth. Pour the fluid portion into the bowls, pile the froth on top, and drop spots of red jelly or of cream, colored before churning, all over the surface--"Missis Jane" will dip it out with a silver ladle, at the head of the table. 2. Italian cakes spread with jelly floating in wine custard, with whipped cream on top. 2 quarts of boiled custard flavored with a cupful of maraschino. 40 or 50 sponge drops spread with jelly. 1 cupful of thick cream.
Make the sponge drops as directed for lady-fingers, with a clisp sugar coating on top. Spread jelly on the bottoms and drop them, with the jelly side uppermost, in saucers nearly filled with the maras chino custard. Whip the cream a little at a time as wanted for filling the orders and place a spoonful on each float as they are sent in. 3. The preceding kind can be made cheaper with plain boiled custard and thin sheets of cake cut in small squares. All the varieties must be very cold to be good. 4. Place 4 or more lady-fingers, made small for the purpose and not doubled two together, ends downwards in jelly glasses, and pile upon them some wine flavored whipped cream. 5. Snow Eggs. Eggs a la Neige. Snow Balls: 12 whites of eggs. 1 or 2 ounces of granulated sugar.
Five dessert variations sharing one idea: something solid afloat in something liquid, all of it served very cold. The instructions assume a hotel pastry department, so quantities are large and some steps are written for plating to order.
- The hinge: everything must be coldThe original says it outright and it is the only rule that governs all five. Custard, cream, cake and glasses should all go into the refrigerator well ahead; a syllabub assembled from cream at room temperature will not hold its froth for the length of a dinner.
- Whipped syllabub separates on purposeThe first version is not a failed whipped cream. Sweetened cream flavoured with wine, whipped only until "half of it is froth," is meant to split into a thin flavoured liquid and a stiff foam; the liquid goes into the bowl and the foam is piled on top. A whip-churn is a hand-cranked cylinder whisk, and a stand mixer on medium does the same work in a minute or two. Stop early rather than late.
- Cream that will whipNineteenth-century "sweet cream" meant fresh, unsoured cream, unhomogenised and generally richer than modern retail cream. Use heavy or double cream, and if possible avoid ultra-pasteurised, which whips slower and holds less well. Three pints is six cups, divided between the two glass bowls the recipe calls for.
- Boiled custardThis means a stirred custard cooked on the stove until it coats the spoon, around 175-180F, not a baked one. Two quarts is a substantial batch; strain it and chill it hard before the cakes go in, or the sponge will collapse into sludge.
- Sponge drops and jelly cakesSponge drops are lady-finger batter piped in rounds and dusted with sugar so it crusts; "clisp sugar coating" in the original is a printer's error for "crisp." A "thin jelly cake the size of a saucer" is a single thin sponge layer, roughly saucer width, spread with jelly. Good bought lady-fingers or a thin sponge sheet substitute honestly here.
- Jelly means fruit jellyIn this period jelly usually means a clear fruit preserve, not a gelatine dessert. The "red jelly" dropped in spots over the syllabub would be a red one such as currant.
- The winesMadeira and raisin wine were both in common use in the period; raisin wine was a sweet homemade wine often standing in for sherry or Madeira, and a cream sherry or sweet Madeira stands in for it now. Maraschino here is the clear cherry liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries.
- Written for service, not for a household"Filling the orders" and "as they are sent in" mean the cream is whipped in small batches through the evening so it never weeps. At home, whip the cup of cream once, shortly before serving, and keep it cold.
- Recipe 5 is incompleteThe snow eggs entry gives only twelve whites and an ounce or two of sugar and then breaks off. The usual method is to poach spoonfuls of stiff meringue briefly in barely simmering sweetened milk and float them on the custard made from the milk, but this page does not say so; work from a full recipe.
- YieldThe quantities are large: three pints of cream, two quarts of custard, forty or fifty sponge drops. Halve or quarter freely; nothing here depends on the scale.
"Floating island" was for most of the nineteenth century a loose catch-all rather than a fixed dish, which is exactly the point this entry makes in its first line: a bill-of-fare name covering any cold trifle in which something floats in a sauce. The oldest member of the family is the syllabub, an English drink-cum-dessert recorded from the sixteenth century in which wine or cider was combined with cream so that it separated into a clear liquid below and a foam above; the name is traditionally, though not securely, explained as a compound of Sille or Sillery wine and "bub" for a bubbling drink. The French line of descent runs through oeufs a la neige, the meringue-and-custard version glanced at in item five. Jessup Whitehead's American Pastry Cook belongs to the trade literature of the 1890s, written for hotel and restaurant pastry departments rather than home cooks, and the tone shows it: quantities by the quart, sponge drops counted out in forties, and instructions for plating to order. The aside about "Missis Jane" ladling the syllabub at the head of the table is a glimpse of the older service style the professional kitchen was steadily replacing.