Skip to main content
Dessert

Tipsy Charlotte

A sponge cake soaked in wine, topped with sliced almonds and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wine and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,260 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the bottom and sides of the stale sponge cake to make it stand evenly in a glass fruit dish.

  2. Make a few deep gashes in the cake with a sharp knife.

  3. Pour the wine over the cake and let it soak.

Decorate and serve

  1. Blanch, peel, and slice the almonds lengthwise.

  2. Stick the sliced almonds all over the top of the cake.

  3. Pour the boiled custard over the entire cake.

  4. Serve with a spoon.

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. Wine + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale sponge cake
Forms the base and soaks up the wine, giving the charlotte its body.
Wine
Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and a boozy flavour.
Sweet almonds
Adds a crisp, nutty texture and visual finish on top.
Boiled custard
Adds creamy richness and sweetness that moistens the soaked cake.

The step that matters

Letting the wine soak in. The cake must absorb the wine fully before the custard is added. Dry spots stay firm and tasteless, while the deep gashes help the liquid reach the centre evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes