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Dessert

Apfel Charlotte

A baked apple dessert with puff pastry crust, raisins, cinnamon, and almonds, finished with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apfel Charlotte

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grease an iron pudding dish with butter.

  2. Line the dish with rich puff pastry.

Fill and bake

  1. Chop apples finely and layer them on the crust with raisins, sugar, and cinnamon. Repeat layering until filled, ending with a layer of crust.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until dark brown.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich puff paste
Forms the crisp, flaky crust that holds the layers together.
Tart apples
Provide the main filling, with tartness that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them brown during baking.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until dark brown. Baking until the crust is dark brown develops browning through the Maillard reaction, adding flavor and crispness. Underbaking leaves the pastry pale and soft, while the apples need enough heat to soften fully.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, raisin, almond, white wine, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, raisin, almond, white wine, 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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