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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of buttered bread and sweetened apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

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

  1. Cut bread into slices ¼ inch thick, then into 1 inch wide strips.

  2. Dip each piece in melted butter and line a baking dish with them, ensuring they meet closely.

Assemble

  1. Fill the center with apple sauce that has been cooked in quarter pieces, sweetened, and flavored with lemon juice.

  2. Cover the top with strips of bread dipped in melted butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes.

  2. Carefully turn out onto a flat dish and serve with cream or sauce.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Bread
Forms the golden buttered shell that holds the apple filling in shape.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Apple sauce
Provides moist, sweet fruit filling that softens while baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apple filling.

The step that matters

Lining the dish with bread. Buttered bread strips must meet closely with no gaps, otherwise the apple filling can leak out and the sides may not hold their shape when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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