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Russian Charlotte, with Apples
Take some biscuits a la cuillere (see the preceding recipe). Line a form with them, placing them as close as possible, so that they may make a complete case. Peel and slice a dozen apples, and stew them in a little butter. Fill the form with the apples, leaving a space in the centre. Fill this space with a marmalade of apricots, cherries, or quinces. Turn cut the charlotte on a dish, and serve cold.
A cold moulded charlotte that depends entirely on how dry you cook the apples. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: cook the apples down hardThe filling has no gelatine, no eggs and no starch, so the only thing holding the charlotte upright is evaporation. Stew the sliced apples in butter over low heat until they collapse into a stiff paste that holds a furrow when you drag a spoon through the pan, then cool them completely before filling. Wet apple will soak the fingers and the whole thing will slump when you unmould it.
- Biscuits à la cuillèreSpoon biscuits, meaning ladyfingers or savoiardi. Commercial dry Italian savoiardi work and are sturdier than homemade; trim them flat at one end so they stand upright against the mould wall, and cut a disc of them to line the base.
- "A form"A charlotte mould: a plain straight-sided tin, slightly flared, about 6 inches across and 1.5 quarts. A soufflé dish or a loaf tin lined with cling film will do, and the film makes turning out far easier than the original method allowed.
- "Marmalade" is not orange marmaladeIn nineteenth-century cookery writing marmalade commonly means any fruit boiled to a thick reduced paste, not specifically orange. Apricot, cherry or quince preserve, boiled down another few minutes to drive off syrup, is what is wanted here; a loose jam will bleed into the apples.
- A dozen applesRoughly 3 to 4 lb of firm cooking apples, which reduces to something under a quart of pulp. Bramleys or another tart cooking variety collapse best; dessert apples hold their slices and give a chunkier, wetter filling.
- SweeteningThe recipe gives none, which assumes the apricot centre and the sugar in the biscuits carry the dish. Taste the apples as they cook and add sugar to suit, along with a strip of lemon zest if the fruit is bland.
- Chilling before unmoulding"Serve cold" means several hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better. The filling firms as it cools and the biscuits soften just enough to knit; turning it out warm will produce a landslide.
- YieldA 1.5-quart mould gives six to eight portions. Apricot jam thinned with a spoonful of water and brushed over the outside will glaze it, though the recipe does not call for it.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century, who is said to have renamed an earlier charlotte à la parisienne in compliment to the Russian court he served; the classic version encases a Bavarian cream in spoon biscuits. What Cassell's gives here is a crossbreed. The older English and French charlotte aux pommes was lined with butter-soaked bread and baked hot, and this recipe keeps its apple filling while borrowing the cold ladyfinger case of the Russian version. That kind of splicing is characteristic of late Victorian household dictionaries, which collected restaurant forms and adapted them for a domestic cook with a plain mould and no ice; the apricot centre is the one flourish of the professional kitchen left standing.