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.

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:

The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides
A belly soft the pulpy apple hides;

— Joel Barlow, "The Hasty Pudding", The New-York Magazine; or, Literary Repository

Some have claimed that it was a tribute to Britain's Queen Charlotte.

In 1815, Marie-Antoine Carême claims to have thought of charlotte à la parisienne "pendant mon établissement", presumably in 1803, when he opened his own pastry shop.