Skip to main content
Dessert

Charlotte Polonaise

A layered cake with lemon and almond flavored layers, chocolate and rose creams, and almond icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Charlotte Polonaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Make 3 thick layers of cake: 1 lemon-flavored gold cake and 2 almond-flavored silver cakes.

  2. Heat the cream or milk in a double boiler.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks mixed with arrowroot to the heated cream or milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Divide the thickened mixture into two parts.

  5. To one part, add powdered sugar, grated chocolate, and crushed macaroons.

  6. To the second part, add bitter and sweet almonds, sliced citron, powdered sugar, and rose water.

  7. Color the second part with cochineal.

Assemble and ice

  1. Place a white cake layer.

  2. Spread chocolate cream over the white cake layer.

  3. Place a yellow cake layer with rose cream.

  4. Top with another white cake layer.

  5. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar for the icing.

  6. Gradually add sweet almond paste mixed with rose water to the icing.

  7. Finish with a plain white icing over the top and sides.

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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Arrowroot + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat, giving the filling body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream so it sets smooth without becoming grainy.
Cream or whole milk
Forms the base of the filling, adding richness and moisture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the white icing that coats the cake.
Sweet almond paste
Adds nutty flavor and body to the icing.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. Egg yolks and arrowroot thicken the cream only when heated gently. Too much heat can curdle the yolks or leave the filling grainy, so cook slowly in a double boiler while stirring.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, cream, egg, arrowroot, sugar, chocolate, coconut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cream, egg, arrowroot, sugar, chocolate, coconut. 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 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes