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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

A dessert of apples wrapped in puff pastry, boiled and served with sugar, butter, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

6 apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat a pot of water until it boils.

  2. Pare and scoop out the core of the apples.

  3. Insert a clove and a little grated lemon peel into each apple.

  4. Enclose each apple in pieces of puff pastry.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the dumplings in a net or bits of linen for 1 hour.

  2. Before serving, cut off a small piece from the top of each dumpling.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar and a small piece of fresh butter into each apple.

  4. Replace the piece of pastry and sprinkle with pounded loaf sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Provide the fruit that softens and fills each dumpling with juicy flesh.
Puff pastry
Encloses each apple and bakes into a flaky, crisp casing around the fruit.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the apple filling as it melts.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and helps the fruit taste rounder.

The step that matters

Boiling the dumplings for 1 hour. The pastry must be sealed around the apple so water does not soak in and make it soggy. Keeping the pot at a steady boil cooks the apple through while the pastry stays intact.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, lemon, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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