Name: Charlotte Russe
Ingredients: ½ cup cream; 1 oz gelatine; Savoy biscuits; ⅓ cup glace cherry; 5 cups milk; 1 oz caster sugar; jelly; angelica; 10 drops vanilla

Why it works: Cherry and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Line the sides of a plain mold with Savoy biscuits, trimming the ends to help them stand.
Run a thin layer of half-set sweet jelly into the bottom of the mold.
Place a cherry in the center and arrange fancifully-cut strips of angelica around it.
Soak gelatine in cold milk, stirring gently as it warms.
Add sugar and vanilla to the gelatine mixture.
Whip the cream and strain the milk and gelatine into a basin.
When nearly cold, fold in the whipped cream and stir until it begins to set.
Pour carefully into the prepared mold and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Turn out onto a glass plate and garnish as desired.

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.

Cherry + vanillatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together890 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Angelica + vanillatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the angelica

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Angelicathe original
Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, biscuit, cherry, milk, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.