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Dessert

Damson Charlotte

A custard and damson fruit dessert with bread and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Damson Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tin

  1. Grease a round cake tin with butter.

  2. Line the sides with strips of bread soaked in sweetened milk.

  3. Shape a round piece of bread to fit the bottom of the tin.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, simmer the damsons and their juice until soft, then remove the stones.

  2. Return the fruit to the saucepan, sweeten to taste, and add the gelatine soaked in cold water. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the tin and cover with another round of soaked bread.

  2. Place the tin under pressure until cold.

  3. Serve with boiled custard poured over the top.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Damsons
Provide the fruit flavour, tartness and the bulk of the set filling.
Stale bread
Forms the structure that holds the charlotte shape while the filling sets.
Gelatine
Sets the fruit juice so the charlotte holds its shape when turned out and sliced.
Boiled custard
Adds richness and creamy sweetness that balances the tart damsons.

The step that matters

Place the tin under pressure until cold. Pressing the filling while it cools helps the gelatine set firmly and compacts the bread and fruit, so the charlotte holds its shape when unmoulded.

“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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