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Dessert

Cherry Charlotte

A dessert of stewed cherries layered with buttered bread and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cherry filling

  1. Stew the pitted cherries in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar and flour with a little water until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the stewed cherries.

  4. Cook the cherries until done.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter slices of baker's bread.

  2. Layer the buttered bread slices in a dish.

  3. Spread some of the stewed cherries over the bread.

  4. Add another layer of bread and cherries.

  5. Top with the remaining stewed cherries.

  6. Serve with cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Morella cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and the body of the filling as they stew down.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps thicken the filling as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cherry juices so the filling holds its shape between bread layers.
Baker's bread
Forms the structure of the charlotte, soaking up cherry juice while holding its layers.

The step that matters

Cook the cherries until done. Cooking the cherries fully softens the fruit and lets the flour thicken its juices. If the filling is too thin, it will soak the bread into a soggy layer rather than holding the dish together.

“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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