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Dessert

Orange Charlotte

A chilled gelatin dessert made with orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, egg whites, and sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in the cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the lemon and orange juice.

  3. Cover and let stand for 30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Add the sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil, stirring in the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Let cool slightly.

  5. Beat in the egg whites until combined.

  6. Pour into a mold lined with sponge cake pieces.

  7. Refrigerate until set.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 liquid into a firm, sliceable filling once chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped into the filling to add lightness and a airy, foamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp citrus juices.
Sponge cake pieces
Form the lining that holds the set filling and gives a soft, absorbent base.

The step that matters

Let cool slightly before beating in the egg whites. If the hot gelatine mixture is too warm when the egg whites go in, the whites can cook or deflate instead of blending smoothly into the filling. Cooling briefly keeps the whites light and the mixture even.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg. 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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