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Dessert

Charlotte Parisienne

A chilled gelatin dessert with macaroons, coconut, cream, lady-fingers, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Charlotte Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Chill 1 pint of cream and whip it. Set aside on ice.

  3. Boil the remaining pint of cream in a saucepan.

  4. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well mixed.

  5. Pour a little hot cream onto the egg mixture, stirring briskly. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  6. Stir constantly for about 1 minute until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  7. Stir in the soaked gelatine. Remove from heat.

  8. Strain into a bowl.

Make the custard and set

  1. Add the powdered macaroons, lady-fingers, coconut, and vanilla.

  2. Let it cool until just beginning to set.

  3. Place the bowl in a pan of cracked ice. Stir until smooth and thick.

  4. Gently fold in the whipped cream with as few strokes as possible.

Mold and serve

  1. Rinse a mold with cold water. Fill it with the mixture. Set aside on ice until firm.

  2. Turn out onto a serving plate and serve immediately.

  3. Or hollow out a stale round sponge cake, fill it with the mixture, and let it harden.

  4. Serve with sweetened cream or custard sauce, very cold.

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. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Coconut + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

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

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 mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Eggs
Thicken the custard base as they cook gently with the hot cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Macaroons
Add almond flavour and body to the set mixture.
Lady-fingers
Soak up moisture and add structure and body to the mixture.
Grated coconut
Adds flavour and a soft, chewy texture to the set dessert.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently. Whipped cream is full of trapped air. Overmixing deflates it and makes the set dessert dense, so use as few strokes as possible.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, 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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