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Dessert

Apples and Apricots, Charlotte of

A baked dessert of layered bread, apricot jam, and apple marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apples and Apricots, Charlotte of

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 bread

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

  2. Cut a round piece of bread for the bottom of a round mold and cut fingers for the sides.

  3. Fry the bread in butter until light brown.

  4. Spread apricot jam thinly on one side of each piece.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the round piece at the bottom and the fingers around the sides, overlapping them.

  2. Fill the center with apple marmalade and spread a thin layer of apricot jam on top.

  3. Cover with more fried bread pieces, place a dish over it, and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. 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. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Form the structure of the charlotte, holding the filling in its mold shape.
Butter
Browns the bread during frying and adds rich flavor to the crust.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, and helps bind the bread layers together.
Apple marmalade
Provides the moist, sweet apple filling that fills the center of the charlotte.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until light brown. Frying seals and browns the bread surface, so it turns crisp and sturdy rather than soggy once it is layered with moist fillings and baked.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Pearfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Apricotthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

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