Floating Island (dessert)
A floating island is a French dessert consisting of meringue floating on crème anglaise (a vanilla custard). The meringues are prepared from whipped egg whites, sugar and vanilla extract then quickly poached. The crème anglaise is prepared with the egg yolks, vanilla, and hot milk, briefly cooked.
There is some confusion about the name. In French cuisine, the terms œufs à la neige ("eggs in snow") and île flottante (floating island) are sometimes used interchangeably; the latter is the source of the English name. The difference between the two dishes is that île flottante sometimes contains islands made of "alternate layers of alcohol-soaked dessert biscuits and jam."
Read more about Floating Island (dessert): Preparation
Famous quotes containing the words floating and/or island:
“They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,—and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)