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Apples and Apricots, Charlotte Of
Take slices of the crumb of bread about a quarter of an inch thick, or, if preferred, a few Savoy biscuits. Have ready a plain round mould. Cut a round large enough for the bottom of the dish, and a number of fingers for the sides. Fry them in butter to a light brown, and spread them thinly on one side with apricot jam. Arrange them in the mould, the round at the bottom and the fingers at the sides, each piece overlapping another to prevent the fruit escaping. Fill the middle with apple marmalade, over which spread a thin layer of apricot jam. Cover the top closely with pieces of fried bread, place a dish over it, and bake in a quick oven. Serve hot. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost of a moderate-sized mould, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
A classic charlotte in the older sense: a mould lined with fried bread, filled with stiff fruit purée, baked and turned out. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the lining.
- The hinge: a stiff filling"Apple marmalade" here means apples cooked down with sugar to a thick, almost dry purée that holds a shape on the spoon. Ordinary loose apple sauce will soak the bread and the charlotte will collapse when unmoulded.
- Oven temperatureA "quick oven" is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F. Half an hour at that heat sets and browns the bread casing; the filling only needs heating through.
- The mouldA plain round mould means a straight-sided or slightly flared metal charlotte mould, roughly 1 to 1.5 quarts. A deep cake tin or small soufflé dish works. Butter it well before lining.
- Overlapping the fingersCut the side pieces narrow enough to overlap like clapboards, pressing them together so the jam helps them hold. Any gap becomes a leak.
- Savoy biscuitsThese are the crisp finger sponges now sold as ladyfingers or savoiardi. The recipe does not make clear whether these too are to be fried; used dry they absorb juice rather than resisting it, so a stiffer filling still matters.
- Frying the breadClarified butter stands the heat better than whole butter, though the recipe says only butter. Fry to light brown only, since the pieces colour further in the oven.
- "Place a dish over it"The dish acts as a cover, holding the top layer down; the recipe does not specify weighting it. A plate that sits inside the rim, or a round of buttered parchment plus a small ovenproof plate, does the job.
- Unmoulding and servingRest five to ten minutes off the heat, then invert onto a warm plate. Serves six, and is much improved by cream or a thin apricot sauce.
- Cost noteThe 1s. 6d. is a Victorian price for the whole mould and tells you nothing useful today beyond that this was an economical pudding built on bread.
The bread-lined, oven-baked charlotte belongs to a family of puddings devised to use up stale loaf, and it is the older of the two dishes bearing the name; the cold, sponge-lined, cream-filled charlotte russe is generally credited to the French cook Antonin Car"me in the early nineteenth century, who is said to have named it in honour of a Russian patron. The name itself is usually traced to Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. The recipe is worth attention because it teaches a technique rather than a single dish: master the lined mould and any stiff fruit pur"e can fill it, which is why apricot jam appears here as both mortar and glaze. That it feeds six for eighteen pence explains its long life in British household books, where bread, butter, apples and a pot of jam were rarely absent from the store cupboard.