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Dessert

Charlotte De Poires

A French dessert of pears baked in a charlotte mold lined with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Charlotte De Poires

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a mold lined with bread.

Make the filling

  1. Peel the pears and cook them in butter with vanilla sugar until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the charlotte mold with the cooked pears.

  2. Bake until set.

Finish

  1. Glaze and serve.

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. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pear + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Pears
Provide the main fruit body and flavor, softening into a tender filling when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the pears cook in it, helping them soften and brown slightly.
Vanilla sugar
Adds sweetness and aroma that complement the cooked pears.
Bread
Lines the mold to give the charlotte its shape and structure around the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the pears until tender. Pears must be cooked fully before filling the mold, because raw or firm fruit releases less juice and stays hard, and it will not set well with the bread during baking.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vanilla, sugar, 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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