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Dessert

German Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of apples in a sweet jam mixture, layered between buttered bread slices.

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 ↓

German Apple Charlotte

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 crust

  1. Cut the crust of the roll into thin slices.

  2. Cut some slices into round pieces the size of a shilling and the remainder into pieces 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  3. Grease a round baking mold with clarified butter.

  4. Dip the round pieces of crust in clarified butter, then in sugar, and lay them at the bottom of the mold.

  5. Place the long pieces of crust around the sides, overlapping the edges to prevent gaps.

Make the apple filling

  1. Peel and quarter the apples, remove the seeds, and slice them.

  2. Stew the apples with sugar, a little fresh butter, lemon peel, and rum until half tender.

  3. Drain the apples on a sieve and boil the strained juice with apricot jam, stirring constantly.

  4. Mix the apples with the jam mixture and let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the mold with the apple mixture and cover it with slices of bread dipped in clarified butter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Turn out and serve hot.

  4. Optionally, sprinkle pounded sugar over the Charlotte after baking.

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 + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roll
Its crumb forms the crisp, buttered shell that holds the filling in shape.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they stew and baking to a tender texture.
Clarified butter
Coats the bread so it browns and crisps in the oven rather than soaking up moisture.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour to the juice that moistens the apple filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and the bread coating, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Laying the crust so there are no gaps. Overlapping the bread pieces on the sides and bottom seals the mold, so the soft filling stays contained and the Charlotte holds its shape when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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