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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked apple dessert with layered bread, butter, apples, lemon, and sugar.

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 quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish.

Layer the charlotte

  1. Layer bread and butter at the bottom of the dish.

  2. Peel, core, and slice the apples, then layer them on top of the bread.

  3. Sprinkle the apples with sugar, lemon rind, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  5. Cover the top with apple peel to prevent burning.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the peel, turn the charlotte out onto a dish, sprinkle with sugar, and serve immediately.

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. Butter + lemontop 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
Form the bulk of the filling and turn soft and sweet-tart as they cook.
Bread
Forms the structure of the dish, soaking up butter and juices as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the bread brown and carry flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the sweetness of the apples.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances sugar and keeps the apples from tasting flat.

The step that matters

Covering the top with apple peel. The peel shields the bread from direct heat so it does not burn before the apples are tender. Removing it later lets the top brown and the surface dry slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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