Julia Child Loved This Vintage French Dessert (2024)

Updated: Mar. 01, 2023

A simple and beautiful way to end any dinner, this classic French floating island dessert will impress all of your guests.

Julia Child is known for helping American home cooks feel comfortable with complex French recipes. (Here are Julia’s cooking lessons we’re still applying today.) The movie Julie & Julia made her Coq Au Vin and chocolate cream pie famous all over again. One of her favorite desserts however, was a somewhat forgotten French classic: île flottante, also known as the floating island dessert.

What Is a Floating Island Dessert?

This quintessential dessert is made of a cooked meringue served in a thick custard sauce. The meringue is the sweet island floating in an ocean of custard or creme anglaise (English cream).

What Is Served on Top of a Floating Island?

Spun sugar, caramel sauce or sugar art are used as a garnish to add color and a crunchy texture to the dessert. Since it is very sweet, a floating island is often served with fresh berries to provide a tart contrast to the sweetness.

How to Make a Floating Island Dessert

Paul Cowan/Shutterstock, Fairchild Archive/Penske Media/Shutterstock

Julia’s dessert was a baked meringue served over a custard sauce.This recipe from Tonya Burkhard of Palm Coast, Florida is a little more approachable and produces similar results by poaching the meringue on the stove top. In France, this variation of the Floating Island Dessert is called œufs à la neige or “eggs in snow.”

Ingredients

4 large egg whites
4 large egg yolks
2 large eggs
1-1/2 cups sugar, divided
1 tablespoon cornstarch
6-1/4 cups whole milk, divided
2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup store-bought caramel sauce
1 cup sliced fresh berries

Directions

Step 1: Get the egg whites to room temp

Place your egg whites in a large bowl; let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Step 2: Create the custard

In a large heavy saucepan, whisk egg yolks, eggs, 1 cup sugar and cornstarch until blended. Stir in 4 cups milk. Cook over medium-low heat 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly until mixture is just thick enough to coat a metal spoon. Don’t allow your milk to come to a boil! Immediately remove from heat and strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl.

Place the bowl in an ice-water bath. Stir occasionally as mixture cools off for 5 minutes. Stir in 1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla. Gently press plastic wrap onto the surface of custard. Let it chill out in the fridge for about 1 hour.

Step 3: Make the meringue

Editor’s Tip: This is a delicate process. Check out our tips before getting started.

Add cream of tartar to egg whites and beat on medium speed until nice and foamy. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating on high after each addition until sugar is dissolved. Stir in remaining vanilla. Continue beating until the desired stiff glossy peaks form.

Step 4: Cook the meringue

In a large heavy skillet, bring remaining milk to a very low simmer over medium-low heat. Drop meringue by 1/3 cupfuls into milk; poach meringues 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until firm to the touch. Carefully place cooked meringues on a paper towel to drain. Repeat with remaining meringue, making a total of 12 pretty snowballs. Discard remaining milk.

Paul Cowan/Shutterstock

Step 5: Assemble the dish

Pour custard sauce onto a lovely dessert plate, and top with 2 to 3 meringues. Drizzle your dessert delicately with caramel sauce and garnish with a few fresh berries.

Voilà: You have your floating island dessert! If this recipe inspired you and you’d like to try cooking like Julia for a week, read this personal account for tips. If you’re looking for more recipes from her cookbook, don’t forget to try this Julia Child’s chocolate mousse recipe.

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Julia Child Loved This Vintage French Dessert (2024)

FAQs

What is Julia Child's classic dessert? ›

Julia Child's timeless desserts - Charlotte Malakoff, Crêpes Suzette, and Chocolate Mousse - are a testament to the elegance and sophistication of French cuisine. Each dessert offers a unique and delightful experience, combining classic techniques with high-quality ingredients to create memorable flavors.

What dish was Julia Child famous for? ›

Child's Boeuf Bourguignon recipe was featured in one of the earliest episodes of The French Chef and has become a classic among the many Child enthusiasts at GBH. In fact, GBH News host Henry Santoro concludes there's no better recipe for the dish.

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Did Julia Child ever go to France? ›

Child repeatedly recalled her first meal at La Couronne in Rouen as a culinary revelation; once, she described the meal of oysters, sole meunière, and fine wine to The New York Times as "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me." In 1951, she graduated from the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and later ...

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What was Julia Child's favorite recipe? ›

Vichyssoise. Well-known as one of Julia Child's favorite dishes, this chilled leek and potato soup is startling in its simplicity. Aside from the leek, potato, and water, Child's version of the soup calls for barely any additional ingredients.

Could Julia Child speak fluent French? ›

By the time they left for other postings six years later, Julia was fluent in French, ran a cooking school and was co-authoring a comprehensive cookbook that would later make her famous.

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What kind of accent did Julia Child have? ›

According to Distractify, while Child was raised for the most part in California, her voice may have been inspired by Mid-Atlantic accents while attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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What kind of oven did Julia Child have? ›

The Garland, six-burner, gas commercial range was manufactured in the early 1950s, and was already a used restaurant stove when Julia and Paul purchased it for $429 in Washington, D.C., in 1956.

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What kind of oven did Julia Child use? ›

For 40 years, colleagues in the culinary arts and later, emergent chefs would cook on that stove. Replaced by a handier electric convection oven only for her last three television cooking shows, Julia's much-loved Garland had heavy, daily use until Smithsonian staff removed it to the Museum in November 2001.

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What did Julia Child cook on her first show? ›

"Bon appétit!"

It was on a 1961 promotional tour for Mastering the Art of French Cooking that Julia made her first contact with public television, as a guest on a GBH book review show called I've Been Reading. She arrived with a hot plate, giant whisk, and eggs and made an omelette on the set.

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