Szarlotka

Apples are layered thickly onto a tender, crumbly butter pastry. Poland’s szarlotka is a fruit pastry that may be topped with more pastry or covered with a crumble of small clumps or with meringue. A square slice reveals sweet-tart fruit, but this name has not always referred to the same pastry. Its history also includes an old method of layering bread.

The name charlotte, used for both warm desserts and chilled desserts

The Polish szarlotka is related to the Western European dessert name charlotte. The warm 18th-century charlotte, baked with bread and fruit, and the cold 19th-century charlotte russe, in which a Bavarian-cream-like filling is surrounded by biscuit, share a name but are desserts with different structures. In Poland, too, charlottes made with different fruits were prepared in the 19th century.

The cold charlotte russe has an origin story linking it to the early-19th-century cook Marie-Antoine Carême and the Russian court. According to the theory that it was named after Princess Charlotte of Prussia, the dessert was dedicated to the woman who would later become the consort of Russian Emperor Nicholas I. There are desserts baked with bread and fruit, chilled desserts made with biscuit and cream, and Polish pastries made with butter pastry and apples. Desserts sharing the same name have spread while changing in temperature and in the ingredients that surround the fruit. Carême’s chilled dessert and today’s apple pastry do not share the same recipe.

In the “Warsaw-style” version given in an 1856 French cookbook, a mold lined with bread is filled with layers of thick apple marmelade and fruits such as apricots and pears. Madeira is added, and the top is also covered with bread before baking. This is one example that a French cookbook presented as Warsaw style, and it does not represent a recipe common to Polish households of the time.

An old method of layering wholemeal bread and apples

The 1904 edition of “Kuchnia koszerna” includes a “szarlotka of apples and wholemeal bread.” Grated bread is moistened little by little with water or white wine, combined with sugar and cinnamon, and layered alternately with thinly sliced apples before cooking. The fruit is scented with lemon zest or a little alcohol.

In this method, no new dough is made from flour; bread that has already been baked is used instead. Although it differs from today’s butter-pastry cake, it shares the practice of layering fruit with other ingredients and cutting the layers into slices. The name szarlotka also carries the memory of a dessert made with whatever bread was on hand.

Adjusting the apples’ moisture to keep the pastry crumbly

Today’s base, kruche ciasto, is a pastry that breaks easily into crumbs. Butter is scattered finely through the flour and brought together with sugar and egg yolks or whole eggs. Some recipes add sour cream, creating a texture that crumbles apart rather than a bread-like springiness.

The apples used include varieties such as szara reneta and antonówka, whose tartness and the way they break down when cooked can be put to good use. Whether the apples are thinly sliced or diced and cooked, or grated raw, also changes how much of the fruit remains in pieces. Sugar and cinnamon are adjusted to the sweetness and aroma of the apples.

Even when the apples are cooked, they are sometimes not puréed completely, so that the fruit keeps its shape. The apples’ moisture is cooked off in advance, a thin layer of breadcrumbs is scattered over the pre-baked base, and then the apples and the top pastry are layered on. The breadcrumbs absorb excess moisture released by the apples. On the other hand, a home recipe (ingredient proportions and method) on the baking website Moje Wypieki also places the fruit on a base that has not been pre-baked, scatters the remaining pastry over it in small pieces, and bakes it all together. Keeping the fruit layer intact requires not only adjusting the apples’ moisture but also preparing the base appropriately.

Covered with pastry or meringue, enjoyed warm or cold

For a version topped with meringue, apples lightly colored in butter and sugar are layered onto a pre-baked base. It is covered with a meringue of egg whites whipped with sugar and combined with starch, then baked, so that the top becomes crisp and toasty enough to crack into thin flakes while the apples beneath turn soft. Compared with versions that also use butter pastry for the lid, both the order in which the layers reach the mouth and the texture when bitten are different.

It is also sometimes eaten as a warm slice with vanilla ice cream. While it is warm, the fruit is soft; once it cools, the filling and pastry settle, making it easier for the cut edges to hold their shape.

At home, stored apples also became an ingredient for szarlotka. Maria Żurawska, interviewed in 2021 as director of the Polish Institute Tokyo, recalls that in her childhood, a time of shortages, her mother preserved summer apples as purée and baked extra teatime sweets to last several days. In her father’s family home, there was a tea time every day at 5 p.m., when something sweet was served with coffee or tea. Pastries baked with preserved seasonal fruit supported this family’s daily tea time.

Distinguishing it from jabłecznik

Jabłecznik, a name derived from the word for apple, is also used in ways that overlap with this pastry. However, that name is sometimes used to include sponge cakes and butter cakes with apples mixed in. Even where the two names overlap, some versions sandwich the fruit between thin layers of pastry, while others are cakes with fruit mixed into them.

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