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APPLE CHARLOTTE (another way)
Well butter a pie-dish, then place in it in alternate layers: first bread and butter, without the crust, then apples cored, pared, and sliced, a little sugar, and the juice and thinly-chopped rind of lemon, and repeat until the dish is full. Cover with the peel of the apples, and bake in a brisk oven. Turn out, and serve with sifted sugar. Time to bake, one hour. A medium-sized dishful will serve four persons. Probable cost, 8d.
A layered bread-and-butter pudding rather than the moulded, bread-lined charlotte most cooks know. A few points of Victorian shorthand need translating before it will behave.
- The apple peel is a lid, not an ingredientThe parings laid over the top act as a sacrificial cover, shielding the last bread layer while the apples steam beneath. Lift them off and discard before turning the pudding out, or serve it right side up and leave them in place until you cut in.
- "A brisk oven"Victorian usage generally means a hot oven, in modern terms somewhere around 425-450F, though Cassell's itself never gives temperatures. For a full hour at that heat the exposed edges will scorch; 400F for the first 20 minutes and 375F thereafter, still with the peel on top, gives the same browning without the burn.
- Bread and butterUse a close-crumbed white loaf, cut about 1/4 inch thick and buttered generously on one side only. Modern sandwich bread is softer and wetter than a Victorian tin loaf; slightly stale slices, or bread left out an hour, hold their shape far better.
- ApplesA cooking apple that collapses is what is wanted here, since the fruit has to bind the bread layers. Bramley or another tart cooker works; dessert apples such as Gala stay in slices and the pudding will not hold together when turned out.
- Lemon"Thinly-chopped rind" means the zest only, pared with a knife and shredded fine. Any white pith carried over turns bitter over an hour in the oven. One lemon is right for a dish this size.
- Turning outButter the dish heavily and give the baked pudding ten minutes to settle before inverting, or the bottom layer will stick and tear. A straight-sided round dish releases more cleanly than an oval pie-dish with a rim.
- SugarThe recipe leaves the quantity to judgement. About 2-3 oz total, scattered between the layers, suits tart cookers; sweeten to taste and remember the sifted sugar finish on top.
- Yield and costFour servings, as stated. The 8d costing is a period price note, common in Cassell's.
The charlotte proper is a moulded pudding lined with buttered bread and filled with fruit, generally traced to English kitchens of the late eighteenth century and often said to honour Queen Charlotte, consort of George III; the attribution is traditional rather than documented. What Cassell's gives as "another way" abandons the mould altogether for a layered pie-dish version, which is really a bread-and-butter pudding without the custard, and it belongs to a long line of English dishes built on the twin facts that bread went stale and apples kept in the loft until spring. The trick of covering the top with the parings is pure thrift-kitchen practicality: nothing is thrown away until it has done a job, and the peel both keeps the crumb from drying and perfumes the fruit beneath as it bakes.