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Dessert

Charlotte of Apples

A baked dessert of stewed apples, quince syrup, apricot jam, brandy, and dried cherries, layered with buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Charlotte of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples with fresh butter, quince syrup, apricot jam, and brandy.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Add dried cherries to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with the diamond-shaped bread dipped in oiled butter.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into the mold and cover with more butter-dipped bread.

  3. Bake until lightly colored.

Finish

  1. Sprinkle with 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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  3. Quince + apricottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 its tender, fruity body once stewed.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Bread
Forms the golden shell that holds the filling in shape as it bakes.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness, fruity flavour and body to the apple mixture.
Quince syrup
Adds sweetness and a perfumed, slightly tart fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the stewed apples through a fine sieve removes lumps and skins and gives a smooth, even filling that sets evenly and slices cleanly.

Swap the quince

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, syrup, apricot, brandy, bread, 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.

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