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 ↓
Burnt Almond Charlotte
Ingredients
Directions
Make the almond caramel
Soak the gelatine in cold water for 2 hours.
Heat sugar in a saucepan until it becomes liquid and dark. Add chopped almonds to the sugar mixture and stir the mixture for 2 minutes.
Turn the mixture onto a platter and let the mixture cool.
Break the cooled mixture in a mortar.
Make the custard
Combine the broken mixture with milk and cook the mixture for 10 minutes.
Beat egg yolks with sugar.
Add the beaten egg yolks to the cooking mixture along with the gelatine. Stir the mixture until smooth.
Remove the mixture from heat and set the mixture in ice water.
Beat the mixture until it thickens.
Set in molds
Gently fold in whipped cream.
Pour the mixture into molds.
Chill the molds in ice until firm.
Optionally, place sponge cake around the mold.
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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Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,130 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Almond + milktop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,800 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,679 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet almonds
- Provide the nutty flavour and crunchy texture of the burnt almond base.
- Sugar
- Caramelises to a dark, bittersweet base and sweetens the custard.
- Gelatine
- Sets the chilled mixture so it holds its shape when unmoulded.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help thicken it as it cooks.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard that carries the almond flavour.
- Whipped cream
- Adds air and fat, giving the set dessert a light, creamy texture.
The step that matters
Cooking the sugar until dark. Sugar darkens quickly once it liquefies, and going too far turns it bitter and burnt. Stop when it is a deep amber so the flavour stays rich rather than acrid.
Swap the almond
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, cream):
- Almondthe original
- Pecansfits about as well
- Pistachiofits less well
- Chestnutfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, cream. 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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