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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked apple dessert with bread and butter.

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 the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples.

  2. Stew the apples gently with a little sugar and the lemon rind until they become a pulp.

Assemble

  1. Butter a mold well and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale bread dipped in melted butter, overlapping them.

  2. Fill the mold with the apple mixture and cover with a thin slice of bread shaped like the mold.

  3. Cover with a plate and place a weight on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for one hour.

  2. Turn out the charlotte and serve hot, sprinkled with sifted sugar.

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

Cooking apples
Break down into a pulp that forms the soft, sweet filling of the charlotte.
Stale bread
Forms the firm outer shell that holds the molded shape around the soft apple filling.
Butter
Coats the bread so it crisps and browns in the oven and helps release the charlotte from the mold.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and balances the tartness of the cooking apples.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples into a pulp. The apples must cook down until thick and smooth so the filling holds together when the charlotte is turned out. Watery or chunky apples can soften the bread and make the shape collapse.

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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