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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of sliced apples in a sweet sauce, layered with buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the apples

  1. Peel, slice, and core the apples.

  2. Place apples in a saucepan with sugar, water, and lemon rind; stir until boiling.

  3. Let simmer for about 1 hour until reduced by half.

  4. Remove from heat and take out the lemon rind.

Assemble the charlotte

  1. Cut thin slices of bread into quarters and dip in melted butter.

  2. Place buttered bread pieces at the bottom of a tin mold.

  3. Line the sides of the mold with buttered bread.

  4. Add the apple mixture in the center and cover with a round of buttered bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the bread is brown and crisp.

  2. Turn the charlotte out onto a hot dish 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. Apple + breadtop 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. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cook down into a thick, sweet filling that holds the charlotte together.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them reduce into a syrupy filling.
Thin bread
Forms the golden, crisp shell that encloses the apple filling.
Butter
Coats the bread so it browns and crisps in the oven.

The step that matters

Reducing the apple mixture. Simmering until reduced by half drives off water so the filling is thick. A runny filling would soften the bread and make the charlotte collapse when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, 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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