Charlotte Russe

Charlotte russe is a dessert, pudding-style or cream-based, encased in sponge cake, ladyfingers, or slices of bread. The French delicacy-turned New York City corner store treat of kids of the 1950s can be traced to the famed French chef Marie-Antonin Carême, who invented it in the early nineteenth century while working in the kitchen of England’s prince regent. The charlotte came into being at the end of the eighteenth-century England as a relative of bread pudding filled with baked apples. An unbaked charlotte resembled an Elizabethan trifle or layered custard. Given its English origins, the sweet dish was likely named after Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III. Carême originally dubbed his concoction Charlotte à la parisienne. The dessert’s name is said to have acquired the “russe” suffix when table service in France switched to Russian style, service à la russe, at a banquet held in honor of Tsar Alexander the First.