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Dessert

Strawberry Charlotte

A layered dessert of sponge cake, strawberries, custard, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Strawberry Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, egg yolks, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened, then flavor to taste.

Assemble the charlotte

  1. Line a glass fruit dish with slices of sponge cake dipped in sweet cream.

  2. Layer sweetened ripe strawberries on top of the sponge cake.

  3. Add another layer of cake and strawberries.

  4. Once the custard is cold, pour it over the layers in the dish.

Top and decorate

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding 1 tablespoon of sugar for each egg white.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites over the top.

  3. Decorate with the largest strawberries set aside earlier.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  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 custard as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light meringue topping over the dish.
Sponge cake
Forms the structure of the layers, soaking up cream and custard.
Sweet cream
Moistens the cake slices so they soften and hold the layers together.
Ripe strawberries
Add fruity flavor and sweetness between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg yolks set as they heat, so the custard must be cooked gently and stirred until it thickens. Overheating can curdle it, and undercooking leaves it runny and unable to hold its layers.

“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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