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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of sliced apples, butter, sugar, and bread, topped with apricot marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Apple Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples, then slice them thinly.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the apples and sugar.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes, shaking frequently.

Assemble and bake

  1. Brown the bread slices in butter.

  2. Spread apricot marmalade on each slice and arrange them edgeways around a dish.

  3. Fill the center with the fried apples and top with more apricot marmalade.

  4. Bake for 5 minutes and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (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 main body and soft, moist filling once cooked down.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the apples and bread brown and take on flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and promotes caramelization during cooking.
Bread
Forms the crisp, golden shell that holds the apple filling.
Apricot marmalade
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor, and helps the bread slices stick together.

The step that matters

Cook the apples for 15 minutes, shaking frequently. Cooking the apples long enough softens them and drives off excess moisture, so the filling holds its shape instead of making the shell soggy.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Pearfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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