Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Charlotte.

A baked apple dessert with suet, breadcrumbs, brown sugar, and lemon rind, layered in a pie dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Charlotte.

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel the apples.

  2. Core the apples.

  3. Cut the apples into thick slices.

  4. Grease a pie dish.

  5. Coat the pie dish thickly with browned breadcrumbs.

  6. Mix the suet and white breadcrumbs together.

  7. Grate the lemon rind.

  8. Mix the lemon rind with the sugar.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the pie dish with alternate layers of apple and the suet-breadcrumb mixture, ensuring the bottom and top layers are thick breadcrumbs.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture on each layer of apple.

  3. Cover with a double layer of greased paper.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Loosen the edges with a knife.

  2. Invert onto a hot dish.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Provide the fruit filling that softens and becomes sweet and tender as it bakes.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the crumbs and keeps the layers moist as they cook.
White breadcrumbs
Form the structure of the layers and soak up juices from the apples.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oil that brightens the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cover with a double layer of greased paper. The paper traps steam so the apples cook through and the crumbs stay moist, while the greased side keeps the pudding from sticking before it is inverted.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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.

More apple charlotte recipes

Swiss 4 See all 235 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes