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Dessert

Pineapple Charlotte

A chilled dessert of cream, pineapple, and jelly set in a biscuit-lined mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pineapple Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Decorate the bottom of a plain round mold with the fruits and set them in jelly.

  2. Split the biscuits and trim the edges.

  3. Dip one edge of each biscuit into egg white to line the sides of the mold.

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in water or syrup.

  2. Add sugar and pineapple pulp.

  3. Allow to cool.

  4. Whisk the cream until stiff.

  5. Add the mixture.

  6. Stir until it begins to set.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the lined mold.

  2. Once set, dip the mold in warm water.

  3. Turn out.

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

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

  3. Pineapple + angelicatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Pineapple + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whisked until stiff, it gives the filling a light, airy structure.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid filling so it holds its shape when turned out.
Savoy biscuits
Line the mold and give the dessert a firm, absorbent outer structure.
Pineapple pulp
Adds fruit flavour and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple filling and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Stir until it begins to set. The gelatine must be partly set before the mixture is poured. If it is too liquid, the cream sinks and the filling will not hold its shape; if it is too firm, it will not pour evenly into the lined mold.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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

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