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Dessert

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte De Pommes

A baked dessert of bread, butter, and apple marmalade, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 the mould

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

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the mould to the brim with apple marmalade.

  2. Cover the top with more slices of bread dipped in butter.

  3. Place a dish or plate on top with a weight.

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

Serve

  1. Carefully turn it out and serve hot.

  2. Drain excess butter before serving.

  3. Optionally sift sugar over it or cover 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. Bread + buttertop 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 soft apple filling in shape.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and crisp as it bakes.
Apple marmalade
Provides the soft, moist apple filling and its sweetness and tartness.

The step that matters

Weighting the top before baking. The weight presses the bread layers against the apple filling so the shell bakes compact and holds its shape when turned out. Without pressure, the filling can spread and the bread can stay loose or soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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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