Tray of Charlotte

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jane. I’m calling from Greenwood, Indiana.

Hello, Jane. Welcome.

Hi, Jane.

Well, I read the book, To Kill a Mockingbird.

And in the 24th chapter, it’s got this word, Charlotte, in there.

And I’ve never seen it as a word.

You know, I’ve always known it as a name for someone or a place.

And anyway, the sentence goes like this.

She carried a tray of Charlotte.

And it got me to thinking, what is that, you know?

And they’re talking about food here.

Where is she when she’s carrying this tray?

Is she in a parlor, outdoors, in the kitchen?

I think it’s in a kitchen, and she’s getting ready to go into the dining area.

So she’s bringing in some treats for the ladies that’s there for a meeting.

Okay.

So, you know, it just got me to thinking, what exactly is a Charlotte?

Well, you called the right show because we love food questions.

Okay.

If we could get away with it, we’d do every episode about food words,

But I don’t think that would work very well.

Charlotte is definitely a kind of treat.

And looking in the recipes, the receipts, as they used to call them,

From the last hundred plus years or so, it’s a fairly complex recipe.

And it’s nothing I would tackle in my home,

Except if it were for somebody that I really loved or a very special occasion.

I do find it in some dictionaries.

One dictionary says,

Charlotte is a dish made of apple marmalade covered with crumbs of toasted bread.

And also a similar dish made with fruit other than apple.

Now, what makes this more complex is that there are a bunch of different kinds of Charlotte.

So there’s Charlotte Russe, and there’s Charlotte Polonaise, and there’s Apple Charlotte.

And sometimes Charlotte is filled with a cream called Bavaroise, which is a French way of saying Bavarian.

So it’s a Bavarian kind of custard cream.

Oh, I’ve got to tell you, these are incredible recipes, Jane.

You just wouldn’t believe it.

Just beautiful stuff.

Charlotte Polonaise, for example.

Looking at this recipe, it’s amazing.

It looks like it would take a day to make.

But its main features are almond paste, chocolate, and lemon.

In a wide variety of ways, mixed with sponge cake and filling and different layers and the whole thing.

It’s a big production.

Oh, Grant, stop.

But the main feature of most of the Charlottes is a type of sponge cake with a type of filling,

Usually some custard cream and fruit in there somewhere.

Grant, are those Charlottes capitalized?

Interesting.

Like a person’s name?

It’s interesting, yeah.

A couple of the dictionaries claim that Charlotte comes from the woman’s name, Charlotte, right?

But nobody knows who the Charlotte was.

So there’s no record of this particular Charlotte.

But Charlotte Russe, which is the most common kind of Charlotte as far as I can tell, means Russian Charlotte.

So perhaps it was named after a woman whose name was Charlotte and was from Russia.

And it’s a pretty old recipe, too.

I see it going back at least to the 1790s.

Oh, yeah. I found one recipe from 1750s.

Oh, really? Okay.

And there’s a wonderful citation in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1796,

Which I just loved the sound of this.

And this is a different type of Charlotte.

The Charlotte brown within whose crusty sides a belly soft the pulpy apple hides.

Oh, wow.

Isn’t that nice?

That’s marvelous.

The belly soft.

Food porn on the radio.

Anyway, so yeah, it’s a yummy treat made of sponge cake and custard and some fruit and a lot of different varieties of it.

I highly recommend, if you have a day to kill, tackle the recipe and send us some of your results.

We’d love to taste them.

Well, that’s a maybe.

I don’t know.

I’m not much of a cook.

All right.

Well, sweet talk of a family member.

Maybe they make them frozen and you can just microwave it.

I don’t know.

Yeah.

Oh, that couldn’t possibly be the same.

So, Jane, thanks for sending us down that path.

Yeah, well, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

It’s our pleasure.

Thank you for calling.

All right.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your food word questions.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send a sweet email to words@waywordradio.org.

Yum.