Apple Charlotte: a thoroughly regal pudding

It’s not terribly surprising that the apple Charlotte is often mistakenly attributed to French chef Marie Antoine Carême; the so-called first celebrity chef is credited with inventing everything from the chef’s tall toque hat to the taxonomic arrangement of sauces, via creating an entirely new system of dining and service. Some of these have more credence than others; the Charlotte, however, does not have Carême to thank. The first recipe for an apple Charlotte appears in 1802 in at a time when Carême was still an apprentice, in The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined by John Mollard. In fact, the apple charlotte comes from British shores, and it was likely named after George III’s wife, Charlotte.

For a regal pudding, it has surprisingly economical credentials: the pudding is simply an apple purée, encased in strips of butter-licked white bread. The purée itself has just a small knob of butter and a little sugar in it, and the bread is better if slightly stale: it is not a dish that shouts of pomp and circumstance. That said, when it is unmoulded onto the plate, it is a thing of real beauty.

There are a few tricks to a truly show-stopping apple charlotte: the bread really should be generously dunked in the butter, leaving no dry spots. Make sure you press the pieces of bread firmly where they overlap, and that you don’t introduce any rogue gaps. The added bonus of careful overlapping is that it makes the finished product more elegant, with interlocking leaves of bread. And cooking the apple until much of the water has been driven off (while stirring to prevent it from catching on the bottom of the pan) makes for a more stable filling, leaving the whole thing less likely to collapse.

You would have to be made of firmer stuff than I am not to feel a little nervous at the prospect of unmoulding a pudding basin.