Skip to main content
Dessert

Country Plum Charlotte

A plum dessert with bread, butter, and cream, baked in a bowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Country Plum Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Stove the plums and stew them until soft.

  2. Sweeten the plums to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the bread and butter, then line the bottom and sides of a large bowl or deep dish with it.

  2. Pour the hot plums into the bowl, cover, and let cool gradually.

  3. Once cold, serve with cream.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Plum + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

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

  4. Plum + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the main fruit body and sweet, tart flavor that the dish is built around.
Bread
Forms the structural lining that holds the shape of the charlotte around the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp while keeping its shape.
Cream
Adds cool, rich contrast to the warm-to-cold fruit when served.

The step that matters

Letting the plums cool gradually. Cooling slowly lets the stewed plums thicken and set, so the filling holds its shape when the charlotte is turned out and sliced instead of running out.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream. 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes