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Dessert

Chocolate Charlotte

A chilled chocolate and cream dessert set in a mold lined with ladyfingers.

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

Chocolate Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for two hours.

  2. Whip the cream until frothy and place it in a bowl over ice water.

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Combine the shaved chocolate, sugar, and boiling water in a small pan, then stir over heat until smooth.

  2. Add the hot milk and soaked gelatine to the chocolate mixture, stirring until the gelatine dissolves.

Assemble and chill

  1. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the whipped cream and gently fold in the chocolate mixture until it thickens.

  2. Line a quart charlotte mold with ladyfingers.

  3. Pour the thickened cream mixture into the mold and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn the charlotte out onto a flat dish.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped into foam to give the charlotte its light, airy body.
Gelatine
Sets the chilled mixture so the charlotte holds its shape when turned out.
Shaved chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and, once melted, body to the mousse-like filling.
Ladyfingers
Form the structural shell that lines the mold around the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the chocolate mixture and balances its bitterness.

The step that matters

Folding the chocolate mixture into the whipped cream. Gelatine begins to set as it cools, so the chocolate mixture should be warm but not hot and the cream should be folded gently. Vigorous stirring knocks air out of the whipped cream, leaving a dense filling instead of a light one.

“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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