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Pear Charlotte
Peel and core a dozen Bon Chretien pears, cut them into quarters, dip them into finely-powdered sugar, and shake them over the fire in a little clarified butter until they are tender; then drain them well. Cut three or four slices of crumb of bread, the third of an inch thick. Line a plain round mould with these, first cutting out a small round for the bottom, and then cutting the rest into fingers, which must be placed round the mould overlapping each other. Dip the bread into clarified butter before putting it into the mould. Fill the mould with the cooked pears, cover the top with slices of bread dipped in butter, and place the dish in a brisk oven until the bread is lightly browned. If the oven be not sufficiently brisk the bread will not colour properly, nor will the charlotte preserve its form. Turn the charlotte out of the mould, and brush it over with apricot jam, or sift powdered sugar thickly over it. Time to bake, from three-quarters of an hour to an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A hot-oven charlotte in the classic French manner: the bread case is the structure, so everything depends on it browning and crisping before the fruit can soften it.
- The hinge: a genuinely hot ovenThe hinge: the oven must be genuinely hot. "Brisk" in this period is generally glossed as a hot oven -- very roughly 400-425F -- and the book is right that a cooler oven ruins the dish. The butter-soaked bread has to set and colour into a rigid shell; in a slack oven it steams, absorbs pear juice and collapses when turned out.
- Bon Chretien pearsThe name covers an old pear long grown in Britain; the cultivar Williams' Bon Chretien, sold in America as Bartlett, is its best-known descendant and the likeliest thing meant here. A dozen quartered pears is a generous quantity, consistent with the recipe's stated yield of six to eight persons.
- Drain the fruit hardCooked pears throw a great deal of liquid, and any of it left in the filling will soak the bread from the inside. Drain in a sieve, and if the pears are still slack, reduce them in the pan until the mixture mounds on a spoon.
- "Crumb of bread"The soft interior of a close-grained white loaf, crusts cut away entirely. A day-old loaf slices more cleanly at a third of an inch than fresh bread.
- Clarified butterNot optional here. Whole butter contains water and milk solids that scorch and go soggy; clarified butter fries the bread as it bakes. Melt unsalted butter gently, skim, and pour off the clear fat, leaving the milky sediment behind.
- The mouldA plain straight-sided charlotte mould, or a similar souffle dish or deep cake tin; the book gives no size. Overlap the bread fingers generously and leave no gaps -- the seams are where a charlotte splits.
- Turning outLet it stand five to ten minutes out of the oven before inverting, so the case firms up. Serve warm, not hot; the apricot glaze should be warmed and brushed on thinly.
- Yield and costSix to eight servings, as stated. The 2s 6d is late-Victorian retail pricing and has no useful modern equivalent.
The charlotte in this form — a mould lined with buttered bread, filled with stewed fruit and baked — is the older, homelier of the two dishes that share the name, and in English kitchens it was overwhelmingly made with apples. Cassell's places pears in the same frame, which is a small piece of evidence about the period's fruit supply: the Williams or Bartlett was the dependable dessert pear of the Victorian greengrocer. The name's origin is disputed and usually given as a compliment to Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though that attribution is traditional rather than documented. The cold, cream-filled charlotte russe, built in a ring of sponge fingers, is a nineteenth-century French elaboration on the same idea and is generally credited to Careme; the baked version here belongs to an earlier, thriftier habit of using up bread.