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Raspberry Charlotte
Take two pounds of ripe raspberries, remove the hulls, see that there are no insects in the hollows of the berries, and have in readiness also one pound of dry breadcrumbs. Then butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with a layer of the dry breadcrumbs; on the top of this place a layer of raspberries, sprinkle plenty of sugar over them, add another layer of breadcrumbs, then a layer of raspberries sprinkled with sugar, and so on until the dish is filled; let the last layer be breadcrumbs. On top of this last layer put bits of butter. Place a plate or cover over it and bake for about thirty minutes. Remove the plate or cover a few minutes before serving and let it brown. Serve cream with it.
A layered breadcrumb-and-fruit pudding of the brown betty family, written with the oven temperature, the sugar and the yield all left to the cook. The points below fill in what the original assumes.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, for the covered thirty minutes should suit, then uncover and raise the heat for the last few minutes to brown the top.
- Dry breadcrumbs, not packaged onesA pound of crumbs here means stale bread dried out and rubbed coarse, not the fine sandy crumbs sold in canisters. Commercial crumbs pack tight and turn pasty under the berry juice; dry your own from day-old white bread and keep them loose.
- The crumb-to-fruit ratioOne pound of crumbs to two pounds of berries is a lot of bread by modern taste, and it appears to be intentional: the crumbs are there to absorb juice so the pudding holds a shape. If you prefer more fruit, drop to about 10 oz of crumbs and expect a looser, saucier result.
- Sugar is unmeasured"Plenty of sugar" over each layer works out to roughly 3/4 to 1 cup total for two pounds of raspberries. Taste the fruit first; supermarket berries out of season need the upper end.
- ButterButter the dish well and use about 3 tablespoons in bits on the top layer. Without it the exposed crumbs scorch rather than brown.
- Covering the dishThe plate laid over the top traps steam so the crumbs soften into the fruit; foil does the same job. Removing it at the end is what turns the surface crisp, so do not skip that step or the top stays damp.
- Checking the berriesThe instruction about insects in the hollows is not squeamishness about a bygone era. A brief soak in cold water and a gentle drain still flushes out anything hiding in the core, and it costs nothing.
- Dish and yieldUse a deep dish of 2 to 3 quarts; a pound of dry crumbs takes up more room than it sounds. It should serve about eight, and the cream called for is most likely unwhipped pouring cream, poured over each portion at the table.
The charlotte name covers a whole family of moulded or layered puddings built on bread, and it is generally traced to late eighteenth-century England, often said to honour Queen Charlotte, though the attribution has never been documented. This version is the plain, hot, baked kind rather than the chilled charlotte russe of ladyfingers and Bavarian cream that Carême made famous, and it sits very close to what American cooks called a brown betty. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel whose name went on this 1896 collection, left the oven heat, the sugar and the yield to the cook's judgement, as this recipe does. Raspberries had a short season, and a pudding that stretched two pounds of them across eight servings with bread and cream was thrift dressed for the dining room.