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Dessert

Charlotte De Pommes

A French dessert of apples, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and bread layered in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Charlotte De Pommes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and quarter the apples, removing the seeds.

  2. In a saucepan over high heat, combine the apples with butter, sugar, and cinnamon until they form a marmalade.

Fry the bread

  1. Fry the stale bread slices in butter until golden, then sprinkle with sugar.

Assemble and cook

  1. Line a copper mold with the fried bread, layering the apple marmalade and the chosen jam in between.

  2. Cover with more slices of fried bread and cook on low heat until golden on both sides.

  3. Invert onto a serving plate and serve warm.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Break down into a soft marmalade that forms the moist, sweet filling.
Stale bread
Fries to a golden crust and holds its shape around the soft apple filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread and apples brown in the pan.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelize and turn golden.

The step that matters

Cooking the apple marmalade. Cooking the apples with butter, sugar and cinnamon over high heat needs attention, since the sugar can scorch before the fruit softens. The marmalade should be thick enough to hold its shape inside the bread, otherwise the charlotte can turn out soggy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, cinnamon, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cinnamon, bread. 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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