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Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A layered baked dessert of apples, bread, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Charlotte

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dish

  1. Grease a pie dish.

  2. Cover the bottom with slices of bread and butter.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer sliced, peeled, and cored apples on top.

  2. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of sugar, a pinch of nutmeg, and 12 drops of lemon juice.

  3. Add another layer of bread and butter on top of the apples.

  4. Repeat layering apples, nutmeg, sugar, and lemon juice until the dish is full, ending with bread and butter.

  5. Cover the top with apple peelings to prevent burning.

  6. Bake for 1 hour in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Form the soft, absorbent layers that hold the structure of the charlotte.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp as it bakes.
Cooking apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening into a moist, tender layer as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly at the edges.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour and helps keep the fruit from browning.

The step that matters

Covering the top with apple peelings. The peelings shield the top bread layer from direct heat, so it does not burn before the apples are fully cooked through during the long bake.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

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