Apple Charlotte
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Peel and slice the apples, place them in a stew-pan with sugar and 1 gill of water.
Peel the lemon thinly, tie the rind with a thread, and simmer with the apples for about 1 hour or until soft.
Remove the lemon rind.
Line the tin
Take a plain round tin.
Cut thin slices of bread and dip a round piece in clarified butter.
Line the top of the tin with the bread slices.
Cut some more bread into fingers.
Line the sides of the tin with the bread fingers, overlapping each slice.
Bake and serve
Fill the centre with the apples.
Cut another round of bread and dip it in clarified fat.
Cover the apples with the bread.
Put the tin into a moderate oven and bake for three-quarters of an hour or until the bread is brown.
Turn out carefully.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Apples (in the method)
- Cook down into a soft filling that gives the charlotte its moist centre.
- Bread (in the method)
- Forms a sturdy shell that holds the apples and browns in the oven.
- Clarified butter (in the method)
- Adds fat that helps the bread crisp and brown evenly.
- Sugar (in the method)
- Sweetens the apples and helps them soften into a tender filling.
The step that matters
Lining the tin with bread. Bread that is cut too thick or left undipped can stay soft or pale, and gaps let the apple filling leak. Overlapping the fingers and fully coating the bread in butter helps the shell hold its shape and brown well.
“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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