Skip to main content
Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A chilled dessert made with Savoy biscuits, cream, brandy, powdered sugar, isinglass, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Line the mold

  1. Line the bottom of a round mold with Savoy biscuits, placing them close together in a star shape.

  2. Line the sides with biscuits edgeways to form a compact wall.

  3. Place the mold on ice.

Make and fill

  1. Prepare the cream by whipping 1 pint of cream until thick, then add ⅓ cup powdered sugar and ½ cup brandy.

  2. Dissolve 2 oz. of isinglass in water and add it to the cream mixture.

  3. Fill the mold with the cream mixture while it is on ice.

  4. Leave it until serving time, then turn it out onto a dish and remove the mold.

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. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Savoy biscuits
Form the crisp outer wall that holds the cream in shape.
Cream
Provides the rich, airy body of the dessert when whipped.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cream and dissolves easily into it without graininess.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Dissolve the isinglass fully before adding it to the cream. Isinglass sets only when it is completely dissolved and evenly mixed. Lumps or undissolved pieces leave weak spots, so the cream may not firm up or unmold cleanly.

“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

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipes