Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓
Charlotte De Pommes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the apples
In a frying pan, combine the minced apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and 2 ounces of butter.
Fry over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.
Assemble and bake
Butter a mold the size of the charlotte.
Cut bread into strips long enough to line the mold from bottom to rim.
Dip each bread strip in melted butter and line the mold with them.
Layer the fried apples, then apricot jam, followed by another layer of buttered bread, starting and ending with bread.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for nearly 1 hour.
Turn out to serve.
Optionally serve with a sweet sauce.
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.
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Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together777 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
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Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,598 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
-
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,950 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together618 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- French rennet apples
- Soften into a fruit filling that holds the charlotte's shape when cooked.
- Bread strips
- Form the outer structure that lines the mold and holds the filling together.
- Fresh butter
- Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp as it bakes.
- Pounded loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelize slightly while frying.
- Apricot jam or marmalade
- Adds sweetness and fruity flavour between the apple and bread layers.
The step that matters
Layering the bread. Bread strips must be fully buttered and pressed snugly against the mold so no gaps let the filling leak or the structure collapse when turned out.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, butter, bread, apricot):
- Vanillafits better
- Pearfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, butter, bread, apricot. 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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