Skip to main content
Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A chilled cream dessert with gelatine, sweet milk, and whipped egg whites folded into flavored thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Combine the thick cream and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Flavor the mixture with wine or vanilla.

  3. Whip the mixture until it resembles syllabub.

Add the gelatine and egg whites

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in the sweet milk.

  2. Let the gelatine mixture cool.

  3. Stir the cooled gelatine into the whipped cream.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the cream mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over a cake.

  2. Let it set in a cool place for about 30 minutes.

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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Thick cream
Whips into a rich, airy body that forms the bulk of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps it whip to a stable texture.
Gelatine
Sets the whipped cream so it holds its shape when cut.
Sweet milk
Carries the gelatine so it dissolves evenly before blending into the cream.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and add airy volume.

The step that matters

Stir the cooled gelatine into the whipped cream. If the gelatine is still hot, it can deflate the whipped cream or melt into it, while cooled gelatine blends in and sets evenly as the dessert chills.

“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.

More charlotte russe recipes

Pineapple 6Chocolate 5 See all 408 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes