Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Charlotte

A baked dessert of cooked apples, currants, sultanas, cinnamon, almonds, and buttered bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apple Charlotte

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 the apples

  1. Pare, core, and chop the apples.

  2. Cook them in a pot with 1 cup of water until soft.

  3. Add the washed currants, sultanas, cinnamon, almonds, and sugar to the cooked apples.

Assemble and bake

  1. Thinly slice the bread and butter it.

  2. Line a buttered pie dish with the bread slices.

  3. Layer the apple mixture over the buttered bread, repeating layers until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of bread and butter.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 to 60 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.

  1. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Cooking apples
Break down into soft, sweet filling that forms the body of the dish.
Bread
Forms the layered structure that holds the apple filling together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crisp and brown on its surfaces.
Currants and sultanas
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture through the apple layers.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until soft. Apples that stay firm will release less juice and leave gaps or a watery filling. Cooking them fully softens the pieces so they pack evenly between the bread layers.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, almond, 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.

More apple charlotte recipes

Swiss 4 See all 235 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes