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Charlotte aux Pommes
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -A few slices of rather stale bread 1/2 inch thick, clarified butter, apple marmalade, with about 2 dozen apples, 1/1 glass of sherry.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
CHARLOTTE AUX POMMES.
Cut a slice of bread the same shape as the bottom of a plain round mould, which has been well buttered, and a few strips the height of the mould, and about 1½ inch wide; dip the bread in clarified butter (or spread it with cold butter, if not wanted quite so rich); place the round piece at the bottom of the mould, and set the narrow strips up the sides of it, overlapping each other a little, that no juice from the apples may escape, and that they may hold firmly to the mould. Brush the interior over with the white of egg (this will assist to make the case firmer); fill it with the apple marmalade, with the addition of a little sherry, and cover them with a round piece of bread, CHARLOTTE AUX POMMES. also brushed over with egg, the same as the bottom; slightly press the bread down to make it adhere to the other pieces; put a plate on the top, and bake the charlotte in a brisk oven, of a light colour. Turn it out on the dish, strew sifted sugar over the top, and pour round it a little melted apricot jam.
TIME.-40 to 50 minutes.
SEASONABLE from July to March.
Charlotte aux Pommes. (An Easy Method of Making.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. lb. of flour, lb. of butter, 1/4 lb. of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful of baking-powder, 1 egg, milk, 1 glass of raisin-wine, apple marmalade, 1/4 pint of cream, 2 dessertspoonfuls of pounded sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon-juice. AVERAGE Cost, 2s.
Make a cake with the flour, butter, sugar, and baking-powder; moisten with the egg and sufficient milk to make it the proper consistency, and bake it in a round tin. When cold, scoop out the middle, leaving a good thickness all round the sides, to prevent them breaking; take some of the scooped-out pieces, which should be trimmed into neat slices; lay them in the cake, and pour over sufficient raisin-wine, with the addition of a little brandy, if approved, to soak them well.
Have ready some apple marmalade, made by recipe; place a layer of this over the soaked cake, then a layer of cake and a CHARLOTTE RUSSE. layer of apples; whip the cream to a froth, mixing with it the sugar and lemon-juice; pile it on the top of the charlotte, and garnish it with pieces of clear apple jelly.
This dish is served cold, but may be eaten hot by omitting the cream, and merely garnishing the top with bright jelly just before it is sent to table.
TIME.-1 hour to bake the cake.
SEASONABLE from July to March.
Two versions of the same dessert: a hot baked case of buttered bread filled with stiff apple marmalade, and a cold assembly built from a plain cake shell. Both stand or fall on the apple filling being dry enough to hold its shape.
- The hinge: the marmalade must be thick"Apple marmalade" here means apples stewed down with sugar to a stiff, almost pasty purée that mounds on a spoon, not a loose sauce. Any free liquid will soak the bread case and the charlotte will collapse when turned out. The recipe allows about two dozen apples for a six-person mould but gives no finished weight.
- Oven heatA "brisk oven" is a hot one, somewhere around 400-425F on a modern dial. The instruction to bake it "of a light colour" means the bread should crisp to pale gold, not brown; if it is colouring too fast, lower the heat for the last stretch. Forty to fifty minutes sets the case.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids removed, so the bread fries rather than scorches. Melt unsalted butter gently, let it settle, and pour off the clear fat. Dipping the bread rather than spreading it gives the firm, crisp shell the recipe is aiming at.
- The egg whiteBrushing the inside of the case with raw white acts as a sealant, and it cooks through in the oven. Do the same at every seam where the strips overlap.
- The mould and the plateA plain round charlotte mould, or any straight-sided metal pudding basin or round cake tin; the recipe gives no size, so choose one that the filling will fill. The plate laid on top acts as a weight, keeping the lid of bread pressed down; a small ovenproof saucer or a foil-covered tin lid does the job.
- Turning outLet it stand five to ten minutes before inverting, or the case will still be soft enough to slump. Serve at once, dusted with icing sugar, with warmed sieved apricot jam poured round rather than over.
- Quantities in the second versionThe flour and butter weights in the cold version have not survived legibly; only the 1/4 lb of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoonful of baking-powder and one egg are readable. A plain creamed cake of that sort, baked in a round tin, gives the right kind of shell; treat the amounts as a guide and judge by consistency.
- Raisin wineA sweet homemade country wine no longer made commercially. A sweet sherry, Madeira or Marsala is the closest substitute, and the brandy is worth adding.
- Yield and seasonSix servings. "Seasonable from July to March" reflects the old apple year, from the earliest fruit through the end of the stored crop; a firm cooking apple such as Bramley is what the marmalade wants.
The apple charlotte is the older and plainer member of the charlotte family: a bread-lined mould, an economical use for stale loaves and a glut of apples, and no dairy at all in the hot version. Its name is generally traced to Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The grander charlotte russe, with its ring of sponge fingers and filling of Bavarian cream, is usually credited to Carême in the early nineteenth century and appears alongside this entry in Beeton's alphabetical run. The inclusion of two recipes, one costed at 1s. 4d. and one at 2s. with an "easy method" tag, is characteristic of the book's approach: the same dish offered at two levels of trouble and expense, with the price per dish printed so a housekeeper could plan against a weekly budget.