Skip to main content
Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A chilled cream dessert set in a biscuit shell, flavored with maraschino liqueur and stabilized with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Line the mold

  1. Line the bottom of a round mold with Savoy biscuits, placing them close together in a star pattern.

  2. Line the sides of the mold with biscuits edgeways to form a compact wall.

  3. Place the mold on ice.

Make the cream filling

  1. In a bowl, whip the cream until it thickens.

  2. Add powdered sugar and maraschino liqueur to the whipped cream.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass in a small amount of water and add it to the cream mixture.

  4. Fill the mold with the cream mixture while it is on the ice.

Set and serve

  1. Leave the mold until serving time, then turn it over onto a dish and remove the mold.

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).

  2. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy biscuits
Form the structural wall and base that hold the cream filling in shape.
Heavy cream
Whipped into a light, airy foam that gives the dessert its body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped cream while dissolving easily into it.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aromatic flavor to the cream.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so the mold holds its shape.

The step that matters

Dissolving the isinglass before adding it to the cream. Isinglass must be fully dissolved in warm water and mixed in evenly; lumps or unmixed pockets leave weak, uneven set spots. Adding it to cream that is already whipped and cold keeps the cream from deflating while the mixture sets evenly on the ice.

“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.

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesButter BiscuitButter Biscuit8 recipesBiscuit PuddingBiscuit Pudding7 recipes