Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Charlotte.— No. 2

A baked apple dessert with buttered bread layers, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Charlotte.— No. 2

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the apple filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the apples, butter, cinnamon, lemon rind and juice, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Add hot water underneath and stew until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter slices of bread and line a mold with them.

  2. Fill the mold with the apple mixture and cover the top with more buttered bread slices.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until rich brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Pippin apples
Cook down into the soft, moist filling that forms the body of the charlotte.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the bread brown in the oven.
Bread
Forms the structural shell that holds the stewed apple filling in the mold.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic flavor to the apple filling.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Stewing the apple mixture until smooth. Apples hold a lot of water, so stewing them until smooth concentrates the filling and drives off excess moisture. A filling that is still watery can make the bread soggy and the charlotte fail to hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, bread. 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 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes