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Dessert

Charlotte Des Pommes

A baked apple Charlotte with layers of fried apples, apricot jam, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Des Pommes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. In a frying pan, combine the minced apples, powdered sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and 2 ounces of butter.

  2. Fry over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a mold that is the size of the desired Charlotte.

  2. Dip bread strips in melted butter and line the mold with them.

  3. Layer the fried apples, then a layer of apricot jam or marmalade, followed by another layer of buttered bread.

  4. Repeat the layers, starting and finishing with bread.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

  6. Turn out to serve.

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, once fried, soft texture and fruity flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the apples fry and the bread brown and crisp.
Bread strips
Form the structural shell that holds the layered filling as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelise slightly while frying.
Apricot jam or marmalade
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity between the layers.

The step that matters

Fry the apples until they are fully softened. Raw or under-cooked apples release water during baking, which can make the charlotte soggy and leave the filling loose when turned out. Frying first drives off moisture and softens the fruit.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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