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Dessert

Charlotte Polonaise

A layered cake made of lemon and almond cakes 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 cake and creams

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

  2. In a double boiler, combine 1½ pints of cream with the yolks of six beaten eggs and two tablespoons of arrowroot.

  3. Cook the mixture until thickened, then divide it into two equal parts.

  4. To one part, add two tablespoons of powdered sugar, six tablespoons of grated chocolate, and half a pound of crushed macaroons.

  5. To the second part, add twelve bitter almonds, six sweet almonds, one ounce of thinly sliced citron, four tablespoons of powdered sugar, and one teaspoon of rose water.

  6. Color the second part with cochineal.

Assemble and ice

  1. Layer the cakes: start with a white cake and chocolate cream, then a yellow cake with rose cream, and finish with a white cake.

  2. For the icing, beat the whites of four eggs with one pound of powdered sugar, then gradually add one pound of sweet almonds beaten to a paste with rose water.

  3. When the icing is nearly dry, cover the top and sides with plain white icing.

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 into a rich custard when heated.
Cream
Provides richness and moisture to the custard filling.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream mixture so it holds its shape in layers.
Macaroons
Add texture and almond-like flavor to the chocolate cream.
Grated chocolate
Flavors the first cream filling with chocolate.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and body to the icing paste.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream mixture until thickened. Egg yolks and arrowroot must be heated gently and stirred so the custard thickens smoothly without curdling or scrambling, which would make the filling grainy and hard to layer.

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.

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