Charlotte in Mexico
Adam Balic recently posted one of his typically well-research articles about apple charlotte along with some trenchant comments about food and nationality.
So is Apple Charlotte British? Well yes, obviously it is. If British people claim it as their own then that is the only important point. The fact that the history of the dish takes it outwith the UK doesn’t change the quintessentially British nature of the dish. There is an unfortunately tendency for some people to use history as a prop for there own lack of confidence, they must have it that if something is British, French, Australian et al., then is was born an bred there. Has this every been true for any nation? It certainly isn’t true for the Apple Charlotte.
So to add just a bit more to the story, here are two Mexican carlotas from the Nuevo Cocinero Mexicano en Forma de Diccionario (1888).
The first is of apples or “perones” (which I think are a kind of apple, not a pear). Almost exactly the same as the English recipe. Peel, core and slice the fruit, add sugar, cook to a puree with a bit of cinnamon. Line a copper bowl with thin-sliced buttered bread, fill with puree, top with more bread, bake until the outside is a good color, unmold.
The second is Carlota Rusa. This is a bowl lined with different colored bizcocho (rusks, biscuits), filled with different colored jams (apricot, guava, etc) and covered with more bizcochos, then unmolded.
Years ago a Mexican friend gave me an alternative recipe for this. Line the mold with lady fingers (from the prestige Mexican cookie maker Mac Ma) and fill with rich butter cream. Unmold and tie with a ribbon (this is from memory, I need to dig out the recipe).
And Mexico too had a royal Charlotte (or Carlota), a Belgian princess who married Maximilian and was fleetingly Empress of Mexico in the 1860s.
Thanks Rachel for the kind comments.
It is an interesting recipe as it basically appeared at the end of the 18th century, ended up in several key cookbooks and by the 1830’s was a standard recipe. 200 or so later it is regarded as a classic and traditional dessert.
What I would really like to find out is if the “Charlotte” from the end of the 18th century really did develop from the Jewish “Schalet” pudding or was it simple coincidence.
I suspect that a key to its fame was the name “Charlotte” which seems to have been very popular in the 1880s to 1850s, so as you point out, lots of people to link it to.
The other type of Charlotte that you mention (Rusa) is thought to have been developed by Careme. This is the original recipe.
“Charlottes a la Parisienne or a la Russe,
Take four ounces of biscuit a la cuilliere, well iced, and a case of green biscuit; with pistachios cut in diamonds of one inch and a quarter in length. With a part of these ingredients, mask the bottom of a plain octagon mould, and with the remainder of the biscuit mask the sides of the mould, putting them upright and close together, the iced side next to the mould. As soon as it is ready, fill the mould with the ingredients for making either of the fromage (cheese) Bavarois, (described in Part VII)., and then cover the cheese with biscuit; after which put the mould in ice for forty miuutes, and then serve it up directly.”