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Dessert

Charlotte Russe

A chilled dessert of cream, jelly, biscuits, and fruit, flavored with brandy or sherry and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Charlotte Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Set the base

  1. Cover the bottom of a charlotte mold with a thin layer of jelly and let it set.

  2. Garnish the jelly with strips of angelica and halved cherries.

  3. Add more jelly to a depth of about ½ inch and let it set.

Line the mold

  1. Line the mold with Savoy biscuits.

Make the cream filling

  1. Dissolve the gelatine and sugar in the milk, then strain it.

  2. Add the brandy and vanilla essence to the strained mixture.

  3. When cool, stir the mixture into the stiffly whipped cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold and refrigerate until firm.

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. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped to hold air, giving the filling a light, airy texture.
Leaf gelatine
Sets the milk mixture so the filling holds its shape when turned out.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the gelatine dissolves into and sets.
Savoy biscuits
Line the mold, giving the charlotte its structure and a sponge-like edge.
Jelly
Forms a set layer on the base and top that holds the garnish in place.

The step that matters

Stir the cooled mixture into the whipped cream. If the gelatine mixture is still warm, it can deflate the whipped cream and melt the set jelly, while cooling it first lets it thicken slightly so the cream keeps its air and the filling sets firm.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Clovefits less well

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

“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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