Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Charlotte, Plain

A baked dessert of sliced apples layered with buttered bread, sugar, and lemon, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Plain

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

  1. Butter a plain pudding mold generously.

  2. Cut enough slices of bread to half fill the mold and spread them with butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the apples in the mold, alternating with layers of bread and butter, sprinkling sugar and lemon juice between layers.

  2. Cover the top of the mold to prevent burning.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve hot.

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
Provide the main body and moisture that softens into the filling.
Bread
Forms the structure of the charlotte, soaking up butter and juices as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the bread brown and taste savoury-sweet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelise slightly at the edges.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Cover the top of the mold. Covering the mold keeps the top bread from scorching before the apples are fully cooked through in the oven's heat.

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.

More apple charlotte recipes

Swiss 4 See all 235 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes