Charlotte
The grateful heart will always inquire- Who was this Charlotte in whose name the apple and other fruits are endowed with a new charm, and become as it were the enchanted apples of story? I have seen English books which aver that she was Queen Charlotte, the wife of Farmer George. There is only so much truth in this that Charlotte was a German. She was at one time the most famous of her name in Europe. Napoleon read Goethe's romance of Werther no less than six times, and Charlotte was the heroine of the romance.
Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Her name has been given to the combination of bread and butter with apples, which can be prepared either with or without a mould. If without a mould, the Charlotte is simply a quantity of buttered apples (which see), piled upon a dish, and hedged round with sippets of bread fried in butter. If with a mould, it is the same thing reached by a different process. The Charlotte mould is a perfectly plain cylinder about five inches deep. This is lined with thin slices of bread which have been dipped in clarified butter. The great art of the composition consists in the arrangement of the lining, cutting the bread into shape, like the pieces of a wooden pail, so as either to fit exactly into the mould, or to make the staves overlap one another. When the little bread pail is formed within the mould, it is filled with buttered apples already prepared; it is covered with a round lid of bread dipped in butter; the mould is put into the oven; and it is left there for five or ten minutes, so that the bread and butter may take a fine golden tint. Then turn the Charlotte out of the mould into a dish, and Chartreuse pour round it some diluted apricot jam. The same receipt applies to pears, apricots, and other fruits.
Charlotte Russe. - The Russian Charlotte is something of a libertine. At least she has much freedom of choice. She began by using finger biscuits for bread, and by choosing to have them with their contents cold, which at once put butter out of the question. A pail of finger biscuits was formed in a round mould, and filled in alternate layers with a cold marmalade of apples and of apricots alone. Afterwards cream was considered a desirable addition, and it was added. The Charlotte was filled with whipt cream, or with a Bavarian cheese flavoured with fruit, or with a fruit jelly and cream such as that described at page 40. Sometimes the finger biscuits of the Charlotte concealed a blancmanger or some other simple jelly. But it is always expected that the Charlotte Russe shall be well chilled upon the ice.
Kettner gives the method in narrative rather than as a list, and assumes you have already read his entry for buttered apples. The essentials are a tightly built bread lining and a filling stiff enough to hold its shape when the mould comes off.
- The hinge: the liningCut the butter-dipped bread into tapering staves and overlap them so there are no gaps. Any seam the filling can seep through will give way when you unmould, and the charlotte will slump onto the dish. (Kettner mentions only a round lid of bread for the top; he says nothing about a disc for the base.)
- Buttered applesThe cross-referenced filling is apples stewed down in butter with sugar until thick and almost dry — closer to a stiff apple paste than a sauce. Wet compote or shop apple sauce will soak the bread and defeat the mould entirely.
- The mouldA charlotte mould is a plain straight-sided cylinder about five inches deep; Kettner calls it 'perfectly plain' and gives no diameter, so neither capacity nor number of servings can be deduced from him. A souffle dish or a straight-sided cake tin of similar depth stands in.
- Oven and timingKettner gives no temperature, only 'five or ten minutes' in the oven, and the filling goes in already prepared, so the time is aimed at colouring the buttered bread rather than cooking anything. In a domestic oven expect to need longer than that for a deep gold, firm crust; let the mould stand about 10 minutes before turning out so the filling settles.
- Clarified butterThe recipe specifies clarified butter because the milk solids in whole butter scorch at these temperatures and make the crust patchy and bitter. Melt butter gently and pour off the clear fat, leaving the white sediment behind.
- SippetsFor the mouldless version, sippets are small triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter until crisp — a border, not a garnish.
- The apricot sauce"Diluted apricot jam" means jam warmed with a little water and sieved to a pouring glaze. Pour it round the base, not over the crust, which should stay crisp.
- Charlotte Russe terms"Finger biscuits" are ladyfingers or savoiardi; "Bavarian cheese" is bavarois, a custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream; "blancmanger" here is a set milk or almond cream. Cold marmalade of apples means a thick fruit paste, not citrus preserve.
- Well chilled upon the iceAn icebox-era instruction: the russe must be thoroughly set before unmoulding. Four hours in the refrigerator is a minimum, overnight is better, and a brief dip of the mould in warm water releases it.
Kettner is right that the name is German rather than Hanoverian-royal: the verse he quotes is Thackeray's mocking summary of Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), in which Werther first sees Lotte slicing bread and butter for her younger siblings — a scene often said to be the source of the bread-and-butter pudding's name. The link to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, is a traditional English claim rather than a documented one, and Kettner allows only so much truth in it as that Charlotte was a German. The cold version is generally credited to Antonin Carême, though the accounts differ on the order in which the charlotte à la parisienne and the charlotte russe came about and on how his service to Russian patrons figured in the naming; the shift from hot buttered bread to chilled ladyfingers and bavarois marks the wider nineteenth-century move toward set cream desserts, which depended on reliable gelatine and on the ice trade.