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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked apple dessert with bread and clarified butter, simmered with lemon rind.

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

Apple Charlotte

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the apples, sugar, and water.

  3. Peel the lemon thinly, tie it with thread, and add it to the saucepan.

  4. Simmer for about 1 hour until the apples are soft, then remove the lemon rind.

Assemble the charlotte

  1. In a round tin, dip a round piece of bread in clarified butter and line the top of the bowl.

  2. Cut more bread into fingers and line the sides of the bowl, overlapping each slice.

  3. Fill the center with the apple mixture.

  4. Dip another round of bread in clarified butter and cover the apples with it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes or until the bread is brown.

  2. Carefully turn out the apple charlotte.

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. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften into a sweet, fragrant filling that holds the charlotte's shape when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them cook down into a thick, syrupy filling.
Slices of bread
Form the crisp, golden outer shell that encases the soft apple filling.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmer the apples until soft. Apples must be cooked fully before assembly, because any remaining firmness or excess liquid will make the filling loose and soggy inside the bread shell.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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