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Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A chilled almond-based dessert made with gelatin, milk, sugar, cream, and ladyfingers or sponge cake.

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 ↓

Charlotte Russe

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Pound the almonds very fine in a mortar.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in the sweet milk.

  3. Add the sugar and bring to near boiling on the stove with the almonds.

  4. Stir in the sweet cream and let simmer for a few minutes.

Set and serve

  1. When nearly cold, strain into prepared molds and set on ice.

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. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the cream and milk mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as it cools.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the cream and milk.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine dissolves into and sets.
Sweet blanched almonds
Pounded fine and steeped in the hot liquid, they add nutty aroma and body.

The step that matters

Straining and chilling when nearly cold. Straining removes almond particles and lumps for a smooth texture. Pouring too early, while hot, risks the gelatine not setting properly, while waiting until fully cold may let it begin to firm unevenly in the molds.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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