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Apricot Charlotte
Well butter a plain round mould. Cut pieces of stale bread-a round for the bottom and fingers for the sides. Fry them in butter, and arrange them in the dish, each piece overlapping another, so that the fruit may not escape. Pour in while hot a little apricot jam. In making the jam, allow half a pound of sugar to every pound of fruit, blanching two or three of the kernels and boiling them with it. Put pieces of buttered bread over the top, and bake in a moderate oven. Turn out carefully, and serve hot, with a little sifted sugar, or with a sauce made of the juice of a lemon stirred into a cupful of milk, and heated over the fire gently, whisking all the time to bring it to a froth. If a richer pudding is desired, slices of sponge-cake may be substituted for the brad, and a custard served with it. Time to bake, half an hour. Sufficient for six persons.
A bread-lined charlotte in the old English manner: fried bread as pastry, hot jam as filling, baked just long enough to set the case. Two things need attention before you start — the quantity of jam, which the original never states, and the apricot kernels.
- Leave out the kernelsApricot kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide; they were used in Victorian preserves for a bitter-almond perfume. Omit them and add a few drops of almond extract instead if you want the flavour, or simply use a good shop-bought apricot jam.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. Half an hour is enough to heat the jam through and crisp the case; longer and the bread darkens past pleasant.
- How much jamThe recipe gives a ratio for making jam but never says how much to use, and never states the size of the mould. For a mould of about 1 quart (1 litre), something in the region of 1 1/2 cups of jam will fill it once the bread lining is in place. Fill generously but not to the brim — hot jam will find any gap in the lining.
- The lining is the hingeOverlap the fried fingers firmly and press them against the buttered mould, with no seams left open. The fried bread is structural; if the jam escapes it welds the charlotte to the tin and it will not turn out.
- Stale bread, and whyDay-old white bread with the crusts off absorbs butter without collapsing. Fresh bread soaks up fat and goes greasy. Cut the fingers about 1/2 inch thick and fry them to a proper golden brown on both sides.
- The lemon-and-milk sauceAcid in hot milk will curdle if the milk gets near a boil; the original's gentle heat and constant whisking keep it smooth while frothing it. Keep it below a simmer and serve it at once; it is a light froth, not a custard, and it will separate on standing.
- Turning outRest the mould two or three minutes off the heat, run a thin knife round the edge, then invert onto a warm dish in one movement. Any longer and the jam cools and sticks.
- YieldSix, as stated. The sponge-cake version served with a custard is, as the recipe says, the richer of the two.
Charlottes are a family of moulded puddings lined with bread, sponge fingers or cake, and the English hot version — apple charlotte above all — is generally traced to the late eighteenth century, with the name often said to honour Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. Carême's cold charlotte russe, set with cream in a wall of savoy biscuits, is the grander cousin; this apricot one belongs firmly to the domestic branch, a way of turning stale bread and a pot of preserve into a hot pudding for six. That Cassell's tucks the jam-making instructions inside the pudding recipe says something about the period: preserving was treated as part of the ordinary business of the kitchen rather than a separate skill, and the reader is assumed to be as ready to make the jam as to bake the charlotte.