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Dessert

Charlotte a LA Fougere

A chilled gooseberry dessert with sponge finger biscuits, wine jelly, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Charlotte a LA Fougere

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry cream

  1. Pick the gooseberries and place them in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of water, the cinnamon stick, and sugar.

  2. Cook until tender, remove the cinnamon, and rub the fruit through a fine sieve.

  3. Warm the milk, strain in the soaked and dissolved gelatine, and add the fruit pulp.

  4. Cook together for a few minutes, then let cool slightly.

  5. Whip the cream and gently stir it into the mixture.

Assemble the charlotte

  1. Line the bottom of a charlotte mould with wine jelly, decorating it with angelica and glacé cherries, and set with a little more jelly.

  2. Trim the biscuits, cut off the tips of one end, and arrange them in the mould.

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. Cinnamon + angelicatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the pulp that gives the filling its body.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped into the filling.
Gelatine
Sets the fruit and cream mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Sponge finger biscuits
Form the structure of the charlotte, holding the filling in its shape.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.

The step that matters

Stirring in the whipped cream. Whipped cream traps air and can deflate or turn grainy if overmixed or added to a warm mixture. Fold it in gently and only after the fruit and gelatine mixture has cooled slightly, so the filling stays light and sets evenly.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, cream, sugar, milk, biscuit, wine. 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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