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Dessert

Raspberry Charlotte

A custard-like dessert made with eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, sponge cake, and raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 950 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Raspberry Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk, sugar, and vanilla extract, and mix well.

  3. Place the mixture in a tin pail.

  4. Set the pail in a kettle of hot water.

  5. Stir the mixture until it reaches boiling point.

Assemble and serve

  1. Let it cool, then pour it over sponge cake spread with raspberry jam.

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. Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 when heated, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma to the custard.
Sponge cake
Provides the soft base that holds and soaks up the custard.
Raspberry jam
Adds fruit flavor and sweetness to the layer beneath the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the custard as it heats. Eggs thicken as they heat, and stirring keeps them from clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pail, so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

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