Skip to main content
Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A molded cream dessert set with gelatine and lined with boudoir biscuits, decorated with cherries, angelica and clear jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Line a souffle mold with boudoir biscuits and decorate with cherries.

Make the cream

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in the water and add the sugar.

  2. Whip the cream with the vanilla extract.

  3. Pour the cooled gelatine into the whipped cream and mix carefully.

  4. Stir until nearly set, then pour into the mold and refrigerate to set.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, turn out the mold and decorate with chopped clear jelly.

  2. Trim the biscuits to the level of the cream before turning out the mold if they are higher.

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. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

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

Cream
Whipped to form the light, airy body of the dessert.
Powdered gelatine
Sets the cream so the dessert holds its shape when turned out.
Boudoir biscuits
Form the outer lining that shapes and supports the mold.

The step that matters

Pour the cooled gelatine into the whipped cream and mix carefully. Gelatine that is still hot can deflate the whipped cream, and overmixing knocks air out of it. Cooling the gelatine slightly and folding gently keeps the cream light and evenly set.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, biscuit. 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.

More charlotte russe recipes

Pineapple 6Chocolate 5 See all 408 →

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesButter BiscuitButter Biscuit8 recipes