Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 custard
Beat the eggs well and stir them into the boiling milk.
Add the sugar and dissolve the gelatin in the water.
Stir the gelatin mixture into the custard while hot and strain through a sieve.
Chill and assemble
Set the mixture aside to cool completely.
Once cool, fold in the sweet cream that has been churned to a froth.
Line a dish with sponge cake, fill it with the Charlotte mixture, and cover with another piece of cake if desired.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar 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
- Eggs
- Thicken the custard as they set with heat, giving the filling body and structure.
- Gelatine
- Sets the liquid custard so the filling holds its shape when chilled and sliced.
- Sweet cream
- Whipped to a froth, it adds lightness and richness to the set filling.
- Sponge cake
- Lines the dish and gives the dessert a soft, absorbent structure around the filling.
The step that matters
Fold in the cream only once the custard is completely cool. Warm custard would melt the froth of whipped cream and deflate it, and gelatine needs cooling to set properly, so the cream would lose its lightness.
“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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