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Dessert

Charlotte of Apples

A layered apple dessert with clarified buttered crumb and preserved cherries, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a round or oval mold.

  2. Cut the loaf into thin slices about 2 inches wide and the depth of the mold.

  3. Cut two round pieces for the top and bottom of the mold.

  4. Dip one round piece in clarified butter and place it at the bottom of the mold.

  5. Arrange the other slices around the sides of the mold.

Fill and bake

  1. Stew the apples and make a purée.

  2. Spread some apple purée at the bottom and add 5 or 6 stewed apples.

  3. Fill some holes with preserved cherries and some with apricot jam.

  4. Cover the apples with more purée and add another layer of stewed apples, repeating the filling process.

  5. Dip the second round piece of crumb in butter and place it on top to close the mold.

  6. Bake for nearly 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn the charlotte out when ready to serve.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. 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
Form the soft, moist filling that sets the charlotte's body and sweetness.
Clarified butter
Coats the bread for richer flavour and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
New loaf
Forms the crumb shell that holds the filling in its shape while baking.
Apricot jam
Adds concentrated fruit sweetness and a glossy, sticky note between the apple layers.

The step that matters

Dip the bread in butter. Bread slices that are not fully coated can stay dry and pale, and gaps let juices leak out. Thorough butter coating helps the crumb brown evenly and seal the shell around the filling.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Apricotthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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.

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