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Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A gelatin dessert made with sweet cream, wine, vanilla, and flavored with cochineal for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak ½ package of gelatine in 1 cup of water until softened.

  2. Add sugar to taste, ½ cup cooking wine, and cochineal for color.

  3. Let the mixture stand until stiff.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. Dissolve ½ box of gelatine in a little water.

  2. Whip 1 pint of sweet cream until stiff.

  3. Add sugar, wine, vanilla, and dissolved gelatine to the whipped cream and beat well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mould lined with ladies fingers and jelly.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Wine + vanillatop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquids into a firm, sliceable structure that holds the shape of the mould.
Sweet cream
Whipped to form the light, airy body of the dessert and adds richness.
Ladies fingers
Line the mould, giving the charlotte its structure and a sponge-like edge.
Cooking wine
Adds flavour and acidity that cut through the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Cream must be whipped to firm peaks so it traps air and holds its shape; under-whipped cream stays runny and the set dessert collapses. Adding the gelatine mixture while it is still warm can also deflate the cream, so the gelatine should be cooled slightly first.

“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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