Charlottes

Here are two recipes for charlottes, one to be served hot, the other cold. Baked Apple Charlotte is an old dessert with variations in many national cuisines. The cold version is a more recent creation, the brainchild of the great French chef Carême, who dreamed up the luxurious Charlotte Russe, or Russian Charlotte, while cooking for Tsar Alexander I around the time of Waterloo. Carême’s Charlotte Russe is made of ladyfingers filled with a thick Bavarian cream. The recipe became so popular that it crossed the Atlantic with the waves of immigrants to the New World, where it was hawked in the streets of New York at the turn of the century.