Skip to main content
Dessert

Pear ‘charlotte’, German Fashion

A baked pear dessert with brioche paste, apricot marmalade, and rum.

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

Why it works: Pear and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pear ‘charlotte’, German Fashion

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pears

  1. Cut pears into quarters and peel them.

  2. Place pears in a flat saucepan with a few tablespoons of water, powdered sugar, and lemon zest.

  3. Cover and boil on high heat for a few minutes, reducing moisture without dissolving the pears.

  4. Remove from heat, discard the lemon zest, and thicken with apricot marmalade.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread buttered brioche paste in a charlotte mold and fill with cooled pears.

  2. Cover with a round of brioche paste, sealing it to the sides.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 35-40 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish and mask with diluted apricot marmalade mixed with light syrup and rum.

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. Pear + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pear + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears
Provide the main fruit body and flavor of the charlotte filling.
Buttered brioche paste
Forms the golden, enclosing shell that holds the filling together.
Apricot marmalade
Thickens the pear filling and adds fruity sweetness and gloss to the glaze.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pears and helps them cook down into a flavorful filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the pears on high heat. Boiling briefly reduces the liquid while keeping the pear pieces intact. Cooking too long softens the fruit until it dissolves, leaving a watery, mushy filling that cannot hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, sugar, apricot, brioche, syrup, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, sugar, apricot, brioche, syrup, rum. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes