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Dessert

Charlotte De Pommes

A French dessert of baked apple puree layered with butter-soaked bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Charlotte De Pommes

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.

Make the apple filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine apples, butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook until the apples are soft and form a puree.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into heart and point shapes.

  2. Soak the bread in melted butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with the soaked bread, ensuring it fits closely with points in the middle.

  2. Fill the mold with the apple puree and cover it with more soaked bread.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 25 minutes.

  4. Invert onto a dish, sift sugar over it, 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Break down into a puree that forms the soft, moist filling.
Bread
Forms the structural shell that holds the filling in shape while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the bread and helping it brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelize and brown slightly.

The step that matters

Fitting and soaking the bread. Bread that is not soaked evenly or fitted tightly leaves gaps, so the puree can leak out and the shape can collapse when the mold is inverted.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cinnamon, bread. 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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