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Dessert

Swiss Apple Charlotte

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Swiss Apple Charlotte

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dish

  1. Remove the crust from the stale loaf and cut slices of bread and butter from the crumb.

  2. Butter the inside of a pie dish and line it with the bread and butter.

Layer the apples

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then add a layer to the dish.

  2. Strew lemon peel and sugar over the apples, then repeat layers until the dish is full.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the two lemons over the top.

  4. Cover the dish with the bread crusts and apple peels to prevent burning.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Once done, remove the crusts and peels, then carefully turn out onto a serving dish.

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. Butter + lemontop 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
Form the bulk of the filling, softening and releasing moisture as they bake.
Bread
Forms the structure that lines and holds the layered filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crisp and brown in the oven.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the apples and draws out juice that softens the filling.
Lemons
Add acidity and fragrant peel oils that brighten the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with bread crusts and apple peels. The cover shields the top from direct heat so it does not burn before the apples are cooked through. Keep it on for most of the bake, then remove it so the surface can brown.

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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