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Dessert

Swiss Apple Charlotte

A layered dessert of apples, lemon, and sugar baked in a crusted bread base.

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 ↓

Swiss 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. Remove the crust from the stale loaf and cut slices of bread and butter from the crumb.

  2. Butter the inside of a pie dish and line it with the bread and butter.

Layer and bake

  1. Add a layer of sliced apples, then sprinkle with lemon peel and sugar.

  2. Continue layering apples, lemon peel, and sugar until the dish is full.

  3. Squeeze the juice of two lemons over the top.

  4. Cover the dish with the bread crusts and apple peels to prevent burning.

  5. Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

Serve

  1. Once done, remove the crusts and peels, and carefully turn out onto a serving dish.

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. Bread + appletop 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. Butter + appletop 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

Stale loaf of bread
Forms the golden bread lining that holds the layered apples in shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp as it bakes.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening and becoming moist as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly at the edges.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavour of the apples.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and keeps the apples fresh-tasting.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with bread crusts and apple peels. The cover shields the top layer from direct heat so it does not scorch during the long bake, while the apples steam underneath and cook through.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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