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Dessert

Apple Charlotte, a Very Simple

A layered apple dessert baked in a pie dish with bread, butter, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,790 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Apple Charlotte, a Very Simple

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pie dish.

  2. Layer bread and butter at the bottom.

  3. Pare and core the apples, then slice them thinly.

Assemble

  1. Layer the sliced apples on top of the bread.

  2. Sprinkle lemon peel and juice over the apples.

  3. Sweeten with moist sugar.

  4. Repeat layering with bread, butter, and apples until the dish is full.

  5. Cover with apple peel to prevent browning.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Turn the charlotte onto a dish.

  3. Sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  4. Serve.

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 + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Bread
Forms the structure of the charlotte, soaking up butter and apple juices as it bakes.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they cook to become tender and moist.
Butter (in the method)
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp at the edges.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps keep the apples from browning.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and promotes browning on the surface as they bake.

The step that matters

Cover with apple peel to prevent browning. Cut apple flesh oxidises quickly when exposed to air, turning brown. Covering the top with peel shields the layers during baking, and the lemon juice slows discolouration further.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, 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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