Name: Apple Charlotte
Ingredients: ½ pound bread crumbs; 1 pound apples, chopped; 2 ounces chopped suet; ¼ pound brown sugar; 1 grated lemon rind; Butter for greasing; Sugar for sprinkling

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 ↓

Apple Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter a pie dish and sprinkle it with sugar.
Mix the suet and bread crumbs together.

Layer and bake

Layer the chopped apples, brown sugar, and lemon rind in the dish.
Add a layer of the suet and bread crumb mixture.
Repeat the layers until the dish is full.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes.
Turn out onto a serving plate.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,790 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the layers and soak up juices so the charlotte holds its shape.
Apples: Provide the main fruit filling, softening and releasing moisture as they bake.
Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the crumbs moist and tender during baking.
Brown sugar: Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly at the edges.