Floating Islands

For some reason, floating Islands seem to have gone out of fashion. I rarely see them on menus anymore, perhaps because they’re simple and we’ve come to expect elaborate desserts in restaurants. Or perhaps it’s because they contain no chocolate, or because the flavor of their principal ingredient, the egg, is left virtually undisguised, as it might be in a piece of cake. For me, a floating island holds the same bittersweet nostalgia as an Edith Piaf song. It evokes something profoundly French, something lost. I eat it with a kind of contented sadness.