Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of stewed apples layered with bread and topped with crushed sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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

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 mould

  1. Grease a mould or basin and line it with thin slices of bread dipped in clarified butter.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples with a little white sugar and lime juice until soft.

  2. Mash the apples and pour them into the mould, then cover with a slice of bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Place a plate on top with a weight to keep it down.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Turn out and serve with crushed sugar.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Thin slices of bread
Form the outer shell that holds the apple filling in shape while baking.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the bread crisp and brown in the oven.
Apples
Provide the soft, moist filling that sets into a tender mass.
White sugar
Sweetens the apples and adds to their flavour and browning.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked apples.

The step that matters

Place a plate on top with a weight to keep it down.. The weight presses the bread and apple layers together so the charlotte holds its shape when turned out. Without it, the filling can loosen and collapse.

Swap the lime

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

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

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

More apple charlotte recipes

Swiss 4 See all 235 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes