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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked apple dessert with buttered bread and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and slice the apples.

  2. Steam the apples until tender.

  3. Add sugar and butter, then cook the apples over medium heat, stirring until very dry.

Assemble

  1. Cut bread into ¼ inch thick strips, trim off the crust, and dip in melted butter.

  2. Line a plain mold with the bread strips, allowing them to overlap.

  3. Arrange circles of bread in the bottom of the mold, then add the cooked apples, piling them high.

  4. Cover with more buttered bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Turn onto a hot dish and serve with sweet cream.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the soft, flavourful filling that is packed into the mold and holds its shape when turned out.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Bread slices
Form the outer shell that holds the apples in shape while baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelise as they cook down.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until very dry. If the apples keep too much moisture, they release juice into the mold while baking, which makes the bread soggy and the charlotte hard to unmold cleanly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread, cream. 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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