Charlotte (cake)

A charlotte is a type of bread pudding that can be served hot or cold. It is also referred to as an "icebox cake". Bread, sponge cake, crumbs or biscuits/cookies are used to line a mold, which is then filled with a fruit puree or custard. The baked pudding could then be sprinkled with powdered sugar and glazed with a salamander, a red-hot iron plate attached to a long handle, though modern recipes would likely use more practical tools to achieve a similar effect.

The variant charlotte russe, also called charlotte parisienne, created by the French chef Antonin Carême, uses a mold lined with ladyfingers and filled with Bavarian cream.

Classically, stale bread dipped in butter was used as the lining, but sponge cake or ladyfingers may be used today. The filling may be covered with a thin layer of similarly flavoured gelatin.

History and etymology

The charlotte is known to have existed by the late 18th century. In 1796, The New-York Magazine published a poem by Joel Barlow called "The Hasty-Pudding" which included the following lines:

Some have claimed that it was a tribute to Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. An alternative explanation has it derived from the English word charlyt, meaning 'dish of custard filling'.

In 1815, Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the most celebrated French chefs, claims to have thought of charlotte à la parisienne "", presumably in 1803, when he opened his own pastry shop.

The earliest known English recipe is from the 1808 London edition of Maria Rundell's New System of Domestic Cookery:Maria Rundell, A New System of Domestic Cookery, p. 151 Cut as many very thin slices of white bread as will cover the bottom and line the sides of a baking dish, but first rub it thick with butter. Put apples, in thin slices, into the dish, in layers, till full, strewing sugar between, and bits of butter. In the mean time, soak as many thin slices of bread as will cover the whole, in warm milk, over which lay a plate, and a weight to keep the bread close on the apples. Bake slowly three hours. To a middling sized dish use half a pound of butter in the whole.

In Carême's 1815 , he mentions many varieties of charlotte: ; he mentions as the name used by others for what he called .Marie-Antoine Carême, Le Pâtissier royal parisien, 1815, full text (Pomme d'api is a variety of apple available in the winter.)

Types There are many variants. The 2015 reference book The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets compares cold charlottes to trifles and icebox (or refrigerator) cakes. BBC Food describes charlottes as "made in a mould lined with sponge fingers or bread slices and filled, then baked or, in the case of cold charlottes, set in the fridge. Apple charlotte is probably the best-known example."

Fruit charlottes usually combine a fruit purée or preserve, such as raspberry or pear, with a custard filling or whipped cream. Charlottes are not always made with fruit; some, notably charlotte russe, use custard or Bavarian cream, and a chocolate charlotte is made with layers of chocolate mousse filling.

The Algerian charlotte is made with honey, dates, orange rind, and almonds.

Charlotte russe

or ('Russian') is a cold dessert of Bavarian cream (bavarois, a mixture of cooked custard and whipped cream) set in a mold lined with ladyfingers."charlotte russe". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Accessed via Dictionary.com, February 27, 2010. It was named as such when it was fashionable to serve food with a Russian name, or in the Russian style (service à la russe).

Charlotte royale is made with the same filling as a charlotte russe, but the ladyfingers are replaced by slices of Swiss roll.

A simplified version of charlotte russe was a popular dessert or on-the-go treat sold in candy stores and luncheonettes in New York City, during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It consisted of a paper cup filled with yellow cake and whipped cream topped with half a maraschino cherry. The bottom of the cup is pushed up to eat.See: Leah Koenig (Feb. 6, 2012) Capital: Lost foods of New York City: Charlotte Russe (with recipe) Charlotte Goldblatt (April 6, 2013) Daily Food & Wine: Retro Brooklyn; searching for a Charlotte russe (recollection & recipe) New York style Charlotte russe is mentioned in the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943), chapters 16 and 39. From chapter 16: "There was a bakery store to one side of it which sold beautiful charlotte russes with red candied cherries on their whipped cream tops for those who were rich enough to buy."

The dessert that 19th-century Russians knew as sharlotka (also transliterated charlottka), a baked pudding with layers of brown bread and apple sauce, has since evolved into a simple dish of chopped apples baked in a sweet batter.

Charlotte (cake)

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