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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A steamed dessert of buttered bread layered with stewed apples and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding basin.

  2. Cut stale bread into thin slices and spread butter on both sides.

  3. Layer the bread in the basin.

Fill and steam

  1. Pour in stewed apples and add sugar to sweeten.

  2. Cover with more buttered bread.

  3. Steam for one hour.

Turn out and serve

  1. Carefully turn out and sift sugar over the top.

  2. Serve with good 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the sturdy outer shell that holds the apples in shape while steaming.
Butter
Coats the bread so it crisps lightly and does not stick to the basin.
Stewed apples
Provides the moist, soft filling and the main apple flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and adds a little sweetness to the finished dessert.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast to the warm fruit and bread.

The step that matters

Carefully turn out. Steamed bread and apple are soft and can collapse or tear when inverted. Letting the charlotte rest briefly and loosening its edges first helps it hold its shape.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

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