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Dessert

Prince of Wales Charlotte

A layered custard and fruit dessert with cake, custard, fruit, and whipped egg whites, baked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peach work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

Prince of Wales Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Layer thick slices of delicate cake in a deep pudding dish.

  2. Pour hot boiled custard made from 3 egg yolks, 1 pint of milk, sugar, and flavoring over the cake.

  3. Let it sit for several hours before serving.

Top and brown

  1. Just before serving, add a layer of sliced peaches or oranges over the cake.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff, then spread over the fruit.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes to brown.

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that soaks into the cake and sets softly.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving moisture and a creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that browns in the oven.
Delicate cake
Acts as the absorbent base that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.

The step that matters

Let the custard soak in before serving. Several hours give the cake time to absorb the hot custard and soften evenly. Serving too soon leaves dry patches and a loose, watery texture.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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