No. 3007

Charlotte a la Destrey

Butter a charlotte mold, either round or oval, this depending on the dish required for serving, and line it with fine foundation paste (No. 135), then let stand in the ice-box for half an hour. Cut eight apples in quarters, peel, core and lay them beside each other on a buttered baking sheet; besprinkle with sugar and cover with a sheet of buttered paper, then cook in the oven and when done remove and let cool off. Prepare a frangipane cream (No. 43); add to it a few spoonfuls of cream rice (No. 160) and a salpicon of fruit, such as green almonds, pears, apricots, a little orange peel cut in thin shreds and a few crushed macaroons. Fill up the charlotte in layers of cream and apples (peaches or pears may be substituted), and smooth the surface; lay the mold on a baking pan, push it into the oven and let cook for about one hour; as soon as finished remove and let rest for ten minutes before unmolding it on a dish, then cover with well-reduced apricot marmalade (No. 3675) and sprinkle highly with chopped roasted almonds; decorate the top with an angelica rosette and around the base of this with a circle of fine halved pistachios; fasten a nice cherry in the center of the rosette and all around a circle of preserved cherries (demi-sucre), cut in two and laid flat on the charlotte. Serve at the same time as this entremets a sauce-boat of English cream sauce, flavored with brandy and Madeira (No. 3004).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a pastry section already stocked, so this entry is mostly assembly by cross-reference. Read it as a pastry-lined mold filled with alternating layers of thick almond custard and oven-baked apple, glazed and decorated after unmolding.

The hinge: keep the filling stiffBoth components must be thick and barely moist before they go in the crust — the apples baked dry on a sheet rather than stewed, the frangipane cooked to a heavy paste and bound further with rice. A loose filling will soak the pastry and the charlotte will slump the moment it leaves the mold.
Foundation pasteNo. 135, "fine foundation paste," is a lining paste rolled thin; "foundation paste" is the usual English rendering of pate a foncer. This page does not say whether it is sweetened. Any firm sweet shortcrust works, and chilling the lined mold the full half hour helps keep the sides from sagging during the hour of baking.
Frangipane cream, 1894 senseRanhofer's frangipane (No. 43) is a flour-thickened, almond-flavored pastry cream rather than the ground-almond sponge filling sold as frangipane today. "Cream rice" (No. 160) is rice cooked soft in sweetened milk and worked smooth; a few spoonfuls act as a binder here.
SalpiconA salpicon here simply means fruit cut in small even dice. Green almonds are unripe almonds in the soft hull, sold briefly in spring at Middle Eastern and Persian markets; blanched fresh almonds are the usual stand-in.
Oven heatNo temperature is given for either stage. The covered apples want a moderate oven, around 350F in a modern range, until tender but still holding their shape; the assembled charlotte can go at much the same heat for the stated hour, by which point the pastry should be colored. Both figures are modern guidance, not Ranhofer's.
Mold and yieldThe recipe specifies no mold size and no yield; charlotte molds of the period varied, and eight apples suggests a dish for a table rather than a fixed serving count. The ten-minute rest before unmolding matters -- it lets the filling set enough to carry its own weight.
The garnish, sourcedAngelica is candied angelica stem, still sold by cake-decorating suppliers; "demi-sucre" cherries are lightly candied rather than the hard glacé sort. Well-reduced apricot marmalade means apricot jam boiled down and sieved until it coats a spoon and sets glossy.
The sauceEnglish cream sauce (No. 3004) is crème anglaise — a stirred egg custard cooked to the point of thickening, not boiled, then flavored off the heat with brandy and Madeira so the alcohol is not driven off.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where a dish like this one existed chiefly to be named: nineteenth-century restaurant practice is often said to have attached a patron's or a colleague's name to an otherwise standard preparation, and the honoree of "a la Destrey" is now untraceable. Structurally it is a hot apple charlotte in the older sense rather than the cold, ladyfinger-walled charlotte russe that Carême's name is generally attached to. The tell that this is restaurant rather than household cooking is the cross-referencing: the frangipane, the cream rice, the apricot marmalade and the custard sauce are all standing preparations kept ready in the pastry room, so what looks like an elaborate recipe was, in service, a matter of assembly and an hour in the oven.