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Dessert

Charlotte Eusse

A chilled dessert made with sweetened cream, gelatin, and a cake or lady-finger lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Eusse

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sweeten and flavor the cream.

  2. Whip the cream until frothy.

  3. Soak the gelatine in a small amount of cold water, then melt it on the stove.

  4. Let the gelatine cool before adding it to the whipped cream.

  5. Line a dish with cake or lady-fingers.

  6. Pour the cream mixture into the lined dish and set it on ice until ready to serve.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Thin cream
Whipped into a light foam that forms the body of the dessert.
Gelatine
Sets the whipped cream so the charlotte holds its shape when served.
Cake or lady-fingers
Form the lining of the dish and give the dessert a structural base.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine cool before adding it to the whipped cream. Hot gelatine can deflate the whipped cream and cause it to lose its airy foam. Cooling it slightly lets it blend in and set evenly without collapsing the structure.

“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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