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Dessert

Strawberry Charlotte

A chilled custard dessert with layers of sponge cake, strawberries, 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: 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 ↓

Strawberry Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat milk, egg yolks, and sugar in a saucepan until thickened to make a boiled custard. Flavor to taste.

Assemble the dish

  1. Line a glass fruit dish with slices of sponge cake dipped in sweet cream.

  2. Layer sweetened strawberries on top of the sponge cake, then add another layer of cake and strawberries.

  3. Once the custard is cold, pour it over the layers in the dish.

Top and decorate

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding 1 tablespoon of sugar for each egg, and spread over the top.

  2. Decorate with the largest strawberries set aside at the beginning.

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Sponge cake
Forms the absorbent base layers that hold the strawberries and custard.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavor, moisture, and sweetness between the cake layers.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar into stiff peaks to form a light, airy topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when cooled.

The step that matters

Cooling the custard before pouring. The custard must be fully cold before it is poured over the cake and strawberries, so it sets thick instead of thinning and soaking the layers into a soggy mess.

“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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