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Dessert

New Zealand Charlotte

A sponge cake dessert soaked in wine, topped with whipped cream flavored with almond extract, and garnished with blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

New Zealand Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a sponge cake in a high, narrow mold.

  2. Once cooked, turn the cake out onto a glass dish and let it cool.

  3. Pour ⅓ cup of wine over the cooled cake and let it sit until ready to serve.

Decorate and finish

  1. Whip 4 pints of cream and flavor it with almond extract and sugar.

  2. Spread the whipped cream around the cake.

  3. Blanch and pound the almonds, then stick them into the cake.

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.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Wine + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the structure of the dessert and soaks up the wine.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and a light, creamy texture over the cake.
Wine
Moistens the cooled sponge cake and adds flavor.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavor to the finished cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the whipped cream.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, cream, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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