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Dessert

Mock Charlotte

A custard-like dessert made with boiled corn starch, sugar, egg whites, milk, egg yolks, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Mock Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Moisten the corn starch with cold water.

  2. Stir the corn starch into 1 cup of boiling water and boil until clear.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in ¾ cup sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites and stir gently until well mixed.

  5. Set away to cool in a mold that has been wet with cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, put 1½ cups milk in a double boiler and let it boil.

  2. Add the 4 beaten egg yolks and ¼ cup sugar, stirring for three minutes.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and serve cold.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Corn starch
Thickens the boiling water into a clear, set mixture that holds the dessert's shape.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they add airy lightness and structure to the mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the milk sauce as they cook gently with it.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, carrying the custard flavour and body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens both the set base and the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites and stir gently. Egg whites hold air only while they stay stiff. Stirring too hard deflates them, so the dessert loses its light texture.

“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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