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Dessert

Charlotte Polonaise

A layered cake with chocolate and rose creams, topped with white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 creams

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

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and arrowroot.

  3. Cook until thickened, then divide into two parts.

  4. To one part, add powdered sugar, grated chocolate, and crushed macaroons or coconut.

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

  6. Color with cochineal.

Assemble the cake

  1. Make three thick layers of cake: one gold flavored with lemon and two silver flavored with almond.

  2. Assemble the cake: layer white cake with chocolate cream, then yellow cake with rose cream, and top with white cake.

Ice the cake

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar, then gradually add the almond paste.

  2. When nearly dry, 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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk base as they set, giving the cream its body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream into a smooth, sliceable filling without adding flour taste.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it richness.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and a fine, slightly chewy texture to the rose cream.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, glossy icing that holds its shape.
Grated chocolate
Adds bitter chocolate flavor and color to one of the creams.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg yolks set around 70°C (160°F), so heating gently over a double boiler and stirring thickens the cream without curdling it into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, egg, arrowroot, sugar, chocolate, 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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