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Dessert

A Charlotte of Apples

A layered dessert of stewed apples, bread, and pastry crust baked in a jelly mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

A Charlotte of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a quart jelly mold with butter.

  2. Line the mold with bread slices dipped in warm clarified butter, overlapping them.

  3. Cut a piece of bread for the bottom and dip it in butter, then place it in the mold.

  4. Brush the bread with beaten egg to hold it together.

Make the apple filling

  1. Combine apples, water, cinnamon, lemon peel, and cloves in a saucepan and stew until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Mix in enough sifted sugar to sweeten, then boil for 5 minutes while stirring to prevent burning.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the mold with the apple mixture and cover with tart paste.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 45 minutes.

  3. Turn out onto a 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the crisp, golden shell that holds the filling in shape.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the bread brown and crisp as it bakes.
Egg
Brushed on the bread to bind the layers together so they hold their shape.
Apples
Provide the main body of the filling, softening into a smooth purée when stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewed apple purée and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Stewing and sieving the apples. Apples must be stewed until fully tender so they pass smoothly through the sieve. Boiling afterward while stirring keeps the sugared purée from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, apple, cinnamon, clove, 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.

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