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Dessert

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte De Pommes

A baked dessert of buttered bread and apple marmalade, topped with more buttered bread and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte De Pommes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a round or square cake tin and line it with thin slices of stale bread, dipped in clarified butter.

  2. Fill the mould to the brim with apple marmalade.

  3. Cover the top with more slices of bread dipped in butter.

  4. Place a dish or a heavy plate on top to weigh it down.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes if small, or 1 hour if large.

  2. Carefully turn it out 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. 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale loaf bread
Forms the crisp, golden shell that holds the filling in shape as it bakes.
Clarified butter
Coats the bread so it browns and crisps in the oven rather than drying out.
Apple marmalade
Provides the soft, sweet-tart filling that sets as it cooks and perfumes the dish.

The step that matters

Filling to the brim, then weighing down. Packing the tin fully and pressing the top with a weight keeps the bread compact, so the charlotte holds its shape when turned out instead of collapsing.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Applethe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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