---
title: "Iles Flottantes"
description: "Or \"Unfulfilled Promises\""
url: "https://elliotali.com/iles-flottantes"
published: "2025-06-13T10:38:00Z"
updated: "2025-06-13T11:27:11Z"
authors: ["Elliot"]
---

# Iles Flottantes

Or "Unfulfilled Promises"

![Iles Flottantes](https://elliotali.com/assets/uploads/7540f5726520a92c47cbd1fc073fef97.jpeg)

My friends and I set ourselves a challenge of cooking something technical once a month. This month I chose Iles Flottantes, which I hoped to be a challenge repaid with light, fluffy, French subtlety.

The recipe is as follows:

- Separate eggs, and then get some yolk in the white, which means they wont whisk, so start again.
- With your new, now successfully separated, eggs take the yolks and cook them **just right** with milk and sugar or else you get sweet scrambled eggs.
- Take the whites and whisk them **just right** with sugar or you get eggy eggs that don’t float.
- Then poach the whites and float these eggs in the custard.
- Heat sugar **just right** or it’ll be bitter or crunchy, or granular, or otherwise fail.
- Then put sugar on the poached eggs floating in eggs.
- ENJOY YOUR EGGS.

Now you may do the washing up. This includes multiple bowls, an eggy sieve (because despite your best efforts, eggs can't be trusted), two eggy whisks and a pan of molten sugar lava.

Level of effort: extreme and finicky. Level of enjoyment: low unless sweet egg whites on egg custard with crunchy bits is your thing.

Edit: Google says this was first documented in 1747, and I think that makes sense. This would make a fine change from week old horse with parsnips.