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Dessert

Charlotte De Pommes

A baked apple dessert with buttered bread layers and a sweet apple puree, topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Charlotte De Pommes

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 the apple filling

  1. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and cut them into quarters.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the apples with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and cook until they turn into a puree.

Assemble the charlotte

  1. Cut the bread into heart and point shapes and soak them in butter.

  2. Line a mold with the soaked bread, ensuring it fits tightly with points in the middle.

  3. Fill the mold with the apple puree and cover it with more soaked bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  2. Turn it out onto a dish, sift sugar over it, 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Break down into a puree that forms the soft, sweet filling.
Bread
Forms the firm outer shell that holds the apple filling in shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and caramelizes on the surface for color and flavor.

The step that matters

Lining the mold with soaked bread. Bread that is soaked too little or fitted loosely can leave gaps or collapse, so the filling may leak or the shape may not hold when turned out.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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