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Floating Island
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs, place the whites in a copper basin and the yolks in a bowl. Set the copper basin on ice and gently beat them up with a thin wire whisk to a stiff froth, then add three ounces fine sugar, a teaspoon vanilla essence, and gently mix with the skimmer for one minute. Place a quart milk in a sautoire with four ounces sugar and let come to a boil; drop a tablespoon of the froth in the milk the size and form of an egg, continue to pour it in until half the froth has been added, then boil for three minutes on each side. Carefully remove with a skimmer and lay them on a cloth, then proceed the same with the other half.
Place four of the egg yolks in a small saucepan, gradually adding half the quantity of the boiling milk, with half a teaspoon vanilla essence; lightly mix on the range with a wooden spoon while heating for five minutes, but do not allow to boil. Strain through a cheesecloth into a bowl and let cool off, pour the sauce into a cold dish, arrange the floating island over, sprinkle a little fine sugar on top and serve.
A poached-meringue dessert — oeufs à la neige in all but name — written for a professional kitchen with copper bowls and a coal range. The translation is mostly about heat control.
- Never let the milk boilPoaching liquid -- The original says to bring the milk to a boil and boil the spoonfuls three minutes a side; in practice a hard boil inflates the meringues, then collapses them into something spongy and weeping. Hold the sweetened milk at a bare shiver, around 170-180F, and poach about 1-2 minutes a side; they are done when they feel set and springy.
- VesselsA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan; any wide shallow pan that lets you turn the meringues with a slotted spoon will do. The "skimmer" is a flat perforated spoon. The unlined copper basin genuinely helps whites hold their volume — a stainless bowl plus a pinch of cream of tartar does the same job.
- Weights into cupsThree ounces of fine sugar for the whites is roughly 6 to 7 tablespoons, a generous 1/3 cup; four ounces for the milk is a generous 1/2 cup. "Fine sugar" here is caster or ordinary granulated, not confectioners'.
- Vanilla essenceRead this as vanilla extract.
- Whites on iceCold whites whip more slowly but to a finer, more stable foam, which is what you want for poaching. Beat to stiff peaks before the sugar goes in, then fold — the instruction to "gently mix with the skimmer for one minute" is a fold, not more beating.
- The custardFour yolks to a pint of hot milk is a thin pouring sauce, as intended. Stir over low heat until it coats the spoon, 175-180F on a thermometer; much hotter and it curdles, which is why the original insists on no boiling. Straining catches any threads.
- Cooling and assemblyCool the sauce with a lid or film on the surface to stop a skin forming, and chill it. Assemble shortly before serving — poached meringues weep if they sit in the custard for hours.
- Leftovers and yieldYou are left with four unused yolks; they keep a day or two covered and go into ice cream or hollandaise. As written this serves six to eight.
Floating island is the English name for a family of desserts built on the same idea: sweetened egg white lightened into a foam and set afloat on a thin custard. The French oeufs à la neige ("snow eggs") poaches spoonfuls in milk, as here, while île flottante in later French usage often means a single large baked or moulded meringue; English cookbooks from the eighteenth century onward used "floating island" loosely for both, and sometimes for little more than whipped cream on wine. The recipe here assumes a copper whipping basin, a sautoire and a range with a cool corner — the equipment of a professional pastry station rather than a home cook.