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Dessert

Charlotte of Apples

A baked apple dessert with a crust of fried bread and a toasted bread top, bound with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Charlotte of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mold

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter the bottom and sides of an iron mold and line it with slices of fried bread.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the apples until soft and reduce them to a marmalade consistency.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with the apple marmalade to help it hold together.

  3. Cover the marmalade with a slice of toasted bread cut to fit the mold.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the mold with a metal lid and bake for about 30 minutes until browned.

  2. Turn out the Charlotte onto a dish and serve without sauce or garnishing.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Cook down to a thick marmalade that forms the soft, moist body of the dessert.
Egg
Binds the apple marmalade so it holds together when turned out.
Fried bread
Lines the mold to form a crisp, golden outer shell around the filling.
Toasted bread
Forms a top layer that seals the filling and adds dry structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples to a marmalade consistency. If the apples stay watery, the filling will be loose and may not hold its shape when turned out. Cooking them until soft and thickened drives off excess moisture and lets the egg bind the mixture.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sauce, egg. 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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