one of the biggest kicks i get out of being in france is when i find something i’ve never seen before, and it makes me do a double-take. after three years of living here, france still does not disappoint. (closeup here)

i almost got whiplash during my second glance at this 2.2 liter box of ready-made, real, fluffy eggwhites. the ingredients: beaten eggwhites, sugar, E412 through E415 (these are: guar gum tragacanth acacia gum; gum arabic xanthan gum respectively) used as emulsifiers, stabilizers, thickeners and gelling agents. a french lady standing next to me was equally perplexed. we both thought they looked gross.

placed between the snack sized mousse au chocolate, from a slight distance, these oeufs à la neige looked like tofu, a very, very large box of tofu. i should know better than that; i’d never find tofu in these parts but it stood out amidst the long aisle of refrigerated desserts. just wishful thinking on my part.

my preference would be to use fresh eggs and prepare them myself.

these are the type of things that would work in the u.s. if they don’t exist already (using, of course, way more chemicals), but in the u.s. they might hide the actual view of the whipped egg whites and put a nice label with a photo of luscious, fresh looking and perfect egg whites ready for your next dinner party’s mousse au chocolat. you know, for the busy executive that is obliged to entertain clients, but as a busy executive, he/she must find shortcuts to save on time but hopefully not on quality, and only half-lying when declaring everything was made from scratch. something like that.

back to the fluffies. suddenly it made more sense. to the left of the egg whites were plastic bottles of crème anglaise. put crème anglaise and oeufs à la neige together and what do you get? ile flotante!