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Apple Charlotte
1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 4 cup chopped almonds 1 tablespoon butter Dip bread in melted butter; butter mold; cut bread into strips an inch wide and the height of the mold. Line bottom and sides of mold with bread. Pare and cut up apples; add sugar, water and lemon juice; cook until apples are soft. Add chopped almonds, one tablespoon butter; pour into lined mold, cover with slices of buttered bread, and bake thirty minutes. Serve with lemon sauce or hard sauce. 1 cup cooked rice 8 apples 2 cups sugar Apples on a Bed of Rice 1 cup water 2 tablespoons lemon juice strawberry jam Press rice into charlotte russe mold; reheat in steamer. Pare and core apples; cook in syrup made of sugar and water until tender. Remove apples; boil syrup until thick; unmold rice; arrange apples around rice, fill cavities in apples with jam, and pour sauce around them. Oranges on a Bed of Rice Prepare in the same way as Apples on a Bed of Rice, except quarter oranges and omit jam. 1 cup milk 1 cup flour 2 eggs
A bread-lined apple mould of the old school: the bread case does the work of pastry, and the filling is little more than a stiff apple compote. Success turns on the apples being cooked down dry enough to hold their shape when the mould is turned out.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven heat, only "bake thirty minutes." A fairly hot oven is what crisps and browns the bread case; a cooler oven leaves it sodden and the charlotte is more likely to collapse when unmoulded.
- The hinge: cook the apples down hardCook the pared apples with the sugar, water and lemon juice until they are soft and thick, stirring toward the end so the mixture mounds on a spoon. Watery filling seeps into the bread and the walls give way the moment the mould is inverted.
- AlmondsThe quantity most likely reads as a quarter cup of chopped almonds. The recipe specifies only "chopped" rather than ground; chopped almonds add texture, not bulk.
- BreadUse a firm, close-crumbed white loaf a day old, crusts off, cut about a quarter-inch thick. Modern soft sandwich bread tears when dipped in butter and will not stand up as a wall.
- The mouldA charlotte mould is a plain straight-sided tin holding roughly 1 to 1.5 quarts, slightly flared. A souffle dish or a small deep cake tin substitutes; line the base with a round of buttered paper for a clean turn-out.
- Unmoulding and yieldRest the baked charlotte five to ten minutes before inverting, so the filling settles. A quart mould should serve about six, though the recipe gives no yield.
- Hard sauceHard sauce is creamed butter and sugar, flavoured, served cold against the hot pudding. It is not cooked, and it needs to be firm when it reaches the table.
- Rice-mould variantsThe Apples on a Bed of Rice that follows uses cooked rice pressed into the same style of mould and reheated in a steamer rather than baked. Boil the poaching syrup down until it coats a spoon before pouring it round, or it will simply flood the plate.
The charlotte is generally traced to late eighteenth-century England, a pudding of stewed fruit baked in a case of buttered bread, and it is distinct from the charlotte russe, which is cold, set with cream, and lined with sponge fingers -- though the reference to a "charlotte russe mold" here suggests the same tinware could serve for both. Apple was a common filling: cheap, abundant in the autumn, and stiff enough when cooked down to support the bread walls. Lowney's, published by the Massachusetts chocolate firm, was one of the many company cookbooks of the era that surrounded their advertised product with a full course of ordinary household recipes, which is why a plain apple pudding sits in the dessert chapter alongside the chocolate work.