“You can never have too much butter.” Julie Powell from Julie/Julia
After completing our second recipe, I have to disagree with Julie Powell. Yes, Julie, you can have too much butter! Our Apple Charlotte was practically inedible due to butter overload.
Observations:
When using a recipe from 1836 the ingredient amounts are not specific. The chef must use common sense when preparing the dish. In hindsight, our common sense should have kicked in when we were melting our third stick of butter for use in this recipe.
Perhaps instead of soaking each layer of bread in butter, we could have drizzled a little butter on the bread layers.
We were originally going to follow the spunge-cake version of this recipe. We decided to use the bread version instead. Not entirely sure if the spunge-cake version would have tasted better, but I have a feeling it may have.
Taken from page 99 in Domestic French Cookery published in 1836.
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We selected 4 crisp Granny Smith apples which we peeled and pared.
One stick of melted butter was blended with ½ cup sugar and lemon zest and teaspoon of cinnamon.
Apples were combined with melted butter / sugar / cinnamon mix.
Apple mix was baked uncovered in 350 degree oven for ½ hour.
After baking, the apple mix was smashed using a fork.
Sliced two loaves of bread and removed the crust.
The bread was dipped in butter prior to layering in pan. We started with a layer of bread on the bottom and then added 1/2 of apple mix.
The top layer is bread dipped in butter.
