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Apple Charlotte
Equal quantities stewed apples and bread crumbs, one spoonful butter, three eggs beaten up and stirred in at the last, just before baking. Spoonful wine, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel, and plenty of brown sugar. Stir together, and bake quite a long time.--Mrs. I. H.
A terse contributor's recipe that assumes you already know what a charlotte looks like. Read it as a baked apple-and-crumb pudding rather than the moulded, bread-lined charlotte of restaurant cooking.
- Working quantities"Equal quantities" is by volume; about 3 cups each of thick stewed apples and dry breadcrumbs with 3 eggs makes roughly six servings, and wants a dish of about 2 quarts. "Spoonful" here is most likely a tablespoon, though the recipe does not say.
- The apples must be dryStew the apples down until they mound on the spoon and no liquid pools. Wet applesauce plus eggs tends to give a curdled, weeping pudding.
- BreadcrumbsStale white bread crumbed dry, not fresh soft crumbs and not commercial dried crumbs, which are too fine and pack. Coarse crumbs keep the texture open.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven heat, only "quite a long time." A modern working equivalent is around 350F for 45 to 60 minutes, until the centre is set and no longer wobbles and the top has browned. It is an egg custard bound with crumbs, so it is done when set, not when a timer says so.
- Eggs at the lastThe eggs are beaten and stirred in just before baking. Whatever the intent, it is worth letting the sweetened apple mixture come down to lukewarm so the eggs do not scramble on contact.
- Wine and spicesThe recipe specifies only "wine"; sherry or Madeira suits it, and a tablespoon is all the "spoonful" implies. For the lemon peel, the zest of about half a lemon pared thin and minced, with no white pith, is a reasonable reading.
- Sugar"Plenty of brown sugar" against modern eating means roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup, adjusted to how tart the apples are. Nineteenth-century brown sugar was less refined than today's light brown; dark brown sugar gives a closer flavour.
- ServingWarm, with cream or a hard sauce. It sets firmer as it cools and can be reheated, though the top loses its crispness.
Apple charlotte belongs to a family of English baked puddings that turn stale bread into a dish worth serving at table, and the name is generally traced to the late eighteenth century, often said to honour Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. The grander version lines a mould with buttered bread and fills it with apple; this one dispenses with the lining and simply stirs crumbs, fruit, eggs and spice together, which puts it closer to a bread pudding than to the moulded original. That plainness is characteristic of Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from recipes sent in by Virginia housewives and printed with their initials attached. Such contributions were written cook to cook, which is why the oven is described only as "quite a long time" and the spices are listed without a single measurement.