Name: Charlotte of Apples
Ingredients: 1 shape of butter; thin slices of bread (crusts removed); 4 cups apples (peeled and cored, sliced); 6 tablespoons butter; 6 tablespoons sugar; apricot jam

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 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

Butter a baking dish.
Line the dish with thin slices of bread, removing the crusts.

Assemble

In a bowl, mix the sliced apples with the butter, sugar, and apricot jam.
Fill the prepared dish with the apple mixture.
Cover the mixture with more bread slices.

Bake

Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together777 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,790 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the bulk of the filling and moisture that softens as it bakes.
Bread: Forms the structure that holds the layered filling together while baking.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the bread brown and the filling taste rounded.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelise at the edges.
Apricot jam: Adds concentrated fruit sweetness and extra moisture to the apple filling.