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Dessert

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte De Pommes

A baked dessert of apple marmalade and buttered bread, topped with sugar or red jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte De Pommes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a round or square cake tin and line it with thin slices of stale bread dipped in clarified butter.

  2. Fill the mold to the brim with apple marmalade.

  3. Cover the top with more buttered bread slices and place a weight on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes if small, or 1 hour if large.

  2. Carefully turn it out and serve hot, optionally dusting with sugar or covering with red jelly.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Stale bread
Forms the crisp, golden shell that holds the filling in shape while baking.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.
Apple marmalade
Supplies the soft, moist filling and the main apple flavour.

The step that matters

Buttering and lining the bread. Each bread slice must be fully coated in butter so the shell browns and crisps rather than staying pale and soggy. A weight on top keeps the shell pressed against the filling so it holds its shape when turned out.

Swap the apple

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

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

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