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Individual Charlottes (Best and easiest made)
Are best and easiest made with either the friar's omelet mixture preceding, or the apple custard pudding following; use the deepest gem pans; if fluted or otherwise ornamented shapes, so much the better. Brush them over with a brush dipped in soft butter, coat with bread crumbs, fill and bake like the large apple cake. When done have some sauce doree ready; mix into it a nearly equal amount of thick cream whipped to froth, and pour this around the charlottes. Another way is to place a spoonful of meringue on each one and set the charlottes back in the oven on a baking pan to color. Place two or three red raspberries on top of the meringue. No sauce required.
A trade-manual shortcut: instead of lining a large mold with buttered bread, the cook builds single-serving apple charlottes in muffin tins. The book assumes you have already made one of two apple mixtures elsewhere in the chapter.
- Gem pansNineteenth-century gem pans are cast-iron muffin pans; capacities varied, and the recipe asks only for the deepest ones. Modern deep muffin tins or individual dariole molds work; the fluted or ornamented shapes the recipe calls "so much the better" give a crisper outline.
- The crumb coat is the hingeButter applied with a brush and then a full coating of dry fine breadcrumbs is what makes these charlottes rather than baked apple puddings, and it is also the only thing that will release them cleanly. Press crumbs into every flute and tip out the loose excess before filling.
- Oven and timeThe recipe only cross-references the large apple cake and gives no temperature or time. A moderate oven, around 350F, is the usual modern equivalent; individual portions will need less time than a full-size charlotte, so judge by the filling being set and the crumb shell browned.
- Sauce dorée"Golden sauce" in this period is generally a stirred egg-yolk custard sauce; the book's own version is given elsewhere. Any thin stirred custard (crème anglaise) stands in. As directed, mix in an almost equal amount of thick cream whipped to a froth and pour it around the charlottes.
- Meringue finishThe second option asks only for color, not cooking: a spoonful of meringue on each charlotte, then back into the oven on a baking pan just until it takes color, watched closely. The raspberries go on after, as the recipe's order implies, so they stay whole.
- Filling the pansThe recipe says only to fill and bake; fill generously and level the tops, since these mixtures are spooned rather than poured.
- UnmoldingThe recipe does not say to unmold, but the fluted pans and the direction to pour sauce "around" the charlottes imply it; let them settle briefly before turning out. Sauce around rather than over keeps the crumb crust crisp.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; it depends on how much of the friar's omelet or apple custard mixture you have made. Count one or two per person depending on the rest of the meal.
The charlotte began as an apple dish, not the chilled ladyfinger dome that later took the name: a mold lined with buttered bread, packed with cooked apple, and baked until the case browned into a crust. Its English relative, the friar's omelet Whitehead names as the filling, is an apple-and-breadcrumb pudding documented in nineteenth-century English and Scottish cookbooks, with earlier origins unconfirmed, and the name Charlotte is generally traced, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to Queen Charlotte, consort of George III. What is distinctly American here is the approach: The American Pastry Cook was written for hotel and restaurant kitchens turning out plated desserts at speed, so the ceremonial bread-lined mold is abandoned in favor of a rack of gem pans and two finishes, one sauced and one meringued, that let the same batter serve two positions on a menu.