Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Charlotte

A coffee-flavored custard dessert made with gelatin, milk, eggs, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Coffee Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for half an hour.

  2. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs very lightly with the sugar and salt.

Make the custard

  1. Add the soaked gelatine to the hot milk and stir until smooth.

  2. Combine the milk mixture with the beaten eggs and stir constantly until creamy.

  3. Remove from heat and add the strong coffee.

Set and finish

  1. Allow to cool until it begins to thicken, then fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Beat the mixture until light and fluffy.

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 + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Eggs
Thicken the custard and add richness and structure to the set dessert.
Milk
Provides the creamy base that the eggs and gelatine set into.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft, airy texture to the finished mixture.
Strong coffee
Gives the dessert its main coffee flavour and aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Combining the milk mixture with the eggs. Egg proteins set when heated, so the hot milk must be added gradually and stirred constantly. Without this, the eggs can scramble and leave lumps instead of a smooth, creamy custard.

“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

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes