Skip to main content
Dessert

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte Des Pommes

A baked dessert of bread and apple marmalade, topped with buttered bread slices and optional jam or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

An Apple Charlotte, or Charlotte Des 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 tin

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

  2. Ensure the bread strips fit perfectly to prevent the syrup from escaping.

Fill and bake

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

  2. If you don't have enough marmalade, add quince or apricot jam, or preserved cherries.

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

  4. Place a dish or a heavy plate on top to weigh it down.

  5. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) 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, and optionally sift sugar or cover with clear 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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + quincetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the bread crisp and brown as it bakes.
Apple marmalade
Provides the soft, moist, sweet-tart filling that sets the body of the dish.

The step that matters

Fitting the bread lining. Bread slices must overlap or fit tightly with no gaps, because any space lets the hot filling leak out and leaves the shell soggy or unevenly set.

Swap the quince

The recipe marks quince as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, apple, sugar):

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

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

More apple charlotte recipes

Swiss 4 See all 235 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipes