Name: Charlotte a L’orange
Ingredients: almond biscuit; orange glaze; pistachios; candied orange peel; maraschino; syrup; whole cherries; orange juice; gelatin

Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Charlotte a L’orange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare almond biscuit on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Cut the biscuit into 10 cm wide strips and coat with orange glaze.
Cut strips into elongated triangles.
Glaze a long strip, 2.5 cm wide, and let it dry.
Line the bottom of a charlotte mold with parchment and coat the sides with glaze.
Mix orange juice with gelatin to create an orange filling.
Fold in chopped pistachios, candied orange peel, and whole cherries.
Arrange biscuit triangles tightly against the mold sides, points down.
Pour the filling into the mold and chill for one hour.
Unmold the charlotte onto a serving plate and garnish with orange segments and jelly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Biscuit + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together388 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Syrup + gelatintop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together192 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,125 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, biscuit, pistachio, syrup, gelatin):

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Cherryfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, biscuit, pistachio, syrup, gelatin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.