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Dessert

Charlotte De Pommes Aux Abricots

A baked apple dessert layered with apricot marmalade and buttered bread, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot 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 ↓

Charlotte De Pommes Aux Abricots

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 the apples

  1. Quarter and peel the apples, then place them in a pan with butter, cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar.

  2. Stew over medium heat, stirring to prevent burning, until the apples are nearly done.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the apricot marmalade.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease the mold with clarified butter and layer the bottom with bread slices dipped in melted butter.

  2. Cover the apples with more buttered bread slices, arranging them like fish scales.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown and crisp.

  4. 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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into a moist, sweet base as they stew.
Bread
Forms the structural shell around the filling and crisps and browns in the oven.
Apricot marmalade
Adds concentrated fruit sweetness and flavor to the apple filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and promotes browning on the crust.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples. Apples held over heat can scorch on the bottom of the pan, so stirring is needed. Cooking them only until nearly done leaves them firm enough to hold their shape in the mold while the bread crisps during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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