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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) · 5 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 filling

  1. Stew the cherries.

  2. Mix the sugar and flour with a little water until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the stewed cherries and cook until done.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter slices of baker's bread and layer them in a dish.

  2. Spread some stewed fruit over the bread, then add another layer of bread and fruit.

  3. Top with remaining fruit and 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 juices that soften the bread.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and balances their natural tartness.
Flour
Thickens the cherry juices so the filling holds together rather than running.
Baker's bread
Forms the structure of the charlotte and soaks up the stewed fruit juices.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the warm, tart fruit.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the cherries. Flour only thickens fully when heated, and it must cook long enough to lose its raw taste. Stop too early and the filling stays thin and floury-tasting.

“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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