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Dessert

Charlotte De Russe

A sponge cake soaked in wine and water, topped with custard and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Charlotte De Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Place the sponge cake in the center of a deep dish.

  2. Mix the wine and water, sweeten with sugar, and pour over the cake. Let it absorb the liquid.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk, sweeten, and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  2. Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks as the milk heats. Remove from heat when it bubbles at the edges.

  3. Once lukewarm, pour the custard around the cake.

Top and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, sweeten with powdered sugar, and flavor with lemon.

  2. Pile the whipped egg whites on top of the cake and serve immediately.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Sponge cake
Forms the base structure that soaks up the wine and water mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that sets as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light, airy topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and softness.
Wine
Moistens the sponge cake and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks as the milk heats. Adding hot milk to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Stirring steadily while heating gently thickens the custard smoothly, and removing it once it bubbles at the edges helps prevent overcooking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, milk, 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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