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Dessert

Myrtle’s Charlotte

A chilled gelatin dessert made with whipped cream, egg whites, powdered sugar, bitter almond essence, and sponge cake or ladyfingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Myrtle’s Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in milk for 2 hours.

  2. Heat the mixture in a furnace kettle until scalding hot.

  3. Strain and cool the gelatine until it thickens.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine whipped cream, whipped egg whites, and powdered sugar.

  2. Mix in the cooled gelatine using an egg beater.

  3. Flavor with bitter almond essence.

Assemble and set

  1. Line a glass dish with sponge cake or lady fingers.

  2. Fill the dish with the mixture and refrigerate until set.

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. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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

Gelatine
Sets the cream and egg white mixture into a firm, sliceable structure when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture to the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped, they add volume and lightness to the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves easily into the whipped mixture.
Sponge cake or lady fingers
Forms a soft, absorbent base and lining that holds the filling in shape.

The step that matters

Cool the gelatine until it thickens before mixing it in. If the gelatine is still hot and liquid when folded into the whipped cream and egg whites, it can deflate the foam and fail to set evenly. Cooling it until slightly thickened lets it blend in while keeping the filling light.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, sugar. 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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