Skip to main content
Dessert

Italian Charlotte

A custard-filled sponge cake dessert with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Italian Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Soak slices of sponge cake in equal portions of wine and water sweetened with loaf sugar.

  2. Place the soaked slices in a glass bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Beat 8 eggs, then add 1 quart of milk and 6 ounces of sugar to the eggs.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Pour the cooled custard over the sponge cake.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth.

  2. Gradually add 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture tastefully over the top of the custard.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sponge cake
Absorbs the wine and water syrup, forming the soft base of the dessert.
Eggs
Thicken the milk custard as they set, giving it a creamy, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the eggs and sugar.
Egg whites
Whipped into a froth, they form a light, airy topping over the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, as powdered sugar, stabilises the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. The custard must cool before it is poured over the cake; hot custard would soak in unevenly and can cook the cake into a soggy, broken base. Cooling lets the egg proteins set gently into a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes