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Charlotte Aux Pommes
Lightly butter a large pudding mould. Have in a bowl four ounces clarified butter. Cut a slice of stale bread to fit the bottom of the mould and gently dip it in the clarified butter, then place it at the bottom of the mould. Cut a few strips of bread of the height of the mould, about one and a half inches wide by one-quarter inch in thickness. Dip in the clarified butter and set up around the inside of the mould, as close to one another as possible to prevent escape of apple juice.
Peel, core and slice eight fine, sound apples; place in a saucepan with an ounce good butter, stir well with a wooden spoon, cover the pan and let simmer for twenty minutes, being careful to stir occasionally. Add four ounces sugar and a teaspoon vanilla essence. Mix well for one minute, fill up the mould with the apples and cover with a round piece of bread. Place the mould in a moderate oven and bake to a nice light colour, which will take about forty minutes. Remove it from the oven; turn it on a hot dish, dredge a little fine sugar over the top of the charlotte. Have half pint of apricot jam spread all around the charlotte and serve.
A classic apple charlotte: bread-lined mould, thick apple compote, baked until the crust colours. The whole thing stands or falls on the bread case, so give that the most attention.
- The hinge is the bread liningOverlap the strips slightly rather than merely setting them close, and press them firmly against the mould. Any gap lets juice out, the wall softens, and the charlotte collapses when turned out.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven here is roughly 350-375F. Forty minutes at that heat should crisp and colour the bread; if it is pale at that point, raise the heat for the last five to ten minutes rather than extending the bake and steaming the crust.
- Weights in cupsFour ounces clarified butter is about half a cup; you will need roughly 5 to 5.5 oz of unsalted butter to yield it. Four ounces sugar is a scant two-thirds cup. Half a pint of apricot jam is one cup.
- The apples matter"Eight fine, sound apples" means firm cooking apples — Bramley, Granny Smith, Northern Spy. The purée must be thick enough to mound on a spoon; if it is loose after twenty minutes, uncover the pan and cook it down or the walls will go soggy. Expect the apples to reduce considerably.
- BreadStale, close-crumbed white bread, crusts removed, cut a good quarter-inch thick. Modern soft sandwich loaves tear and absorb butter unevenly; a day-old firm white loaf or brioche works better.
- Turning it outLet the mould stand five to ten minutes before inverting. Straight from the oven the structure is still fragile; too long and the steam softens the crust.
- The apricot sauceWarm the jam and sieve out the fruit pieces so it pours as a glaze around the base. Spooned on cold and stiff it simply sits there.
- YieldRoughly a 1.5- to 2-quart mould (the recipe says only 'large'), serving about six to eight. Serve hot — this is not a dish that improves standing.
Apple charlotte belongs to the older, hot branch of the charlotte family: a bread case baked around fruit, distinct from the cold charlotte russe of ladyfingers and Bavarian cream that Carême is generally credited with popularising in the early nineteenth century. The name is traditionally said to honour Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. The dish suited a period when stale bread was a resource rather than waste, and when butter, sugar and a good apple crop were enough to make a company dessert. Its appearance in an international collection of this sort reflects how thoroughly French professional kitchen practice — clarified butter, a lined mould, an apricot glaze at the finish — had become the shared grammar of hotel and restaurant cooking in English-speaking countries by the early twentieth century.