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 ↓
Apple Charlotte
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Trim the crust off the bread and cut it into round slices, about 1 inch wide.
Grease a mould thickly with butter and line it evenly with the bread.
Core, peel, and quarter the apples, then cut each quarter into smaller pieces.
Make the filling
Add 1 cup of sugar to the apples.
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, then add the apples and toss until cooked but not broken.
Stir in ¼ cup of marmalade and pour the mixture into the lined mould.
Bake and serve
Cover the top with a thin slice of buttered bread.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes until the bread is golden.
After removing from the oven, turn the charlotte out onto a platter, sprinkle with sugar, and serve with caramel or a butter-and-sugar sauce.
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.
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Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together506 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + appletop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,790 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Butter + appletop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Bread + quincetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Bread
- Forms the golden outer shell that holds the apple filling in shape.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the bread brown in the mould.
- Tart apples
- Provide the bulk of the filling and a fresh, tangy flavour.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly while cooking.
- Quince or apricot marmalade
- Adds concentrated fruit flavour and sweetness to bind the apple filling.
The step that matters
Toss the apples until cooked but not broken. Apples that are overcooked turn to mush and release excess water, which makes the charlotte soggy and unable to hold its shape when turned out.
Swap the quince
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, apple, sugar):
- Figfits better
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits better
- 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.
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