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Dessert

Dumpling No. 5. Apple Pir

A pastry dumpling filled with sliced tart apples, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and cinnamon, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dumpling No. 5. Apple Pir

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare a wide sheet of pie dough.

  2. Peel and slice the tart apples, then place them on the dough.

  3. Sprinkle white sugar and nutmeg over the apples.

  4. Add a slice of sweet butter on top of the apples.

  5. Dust with cinnamon.

  6. Fold the dough over the filling and seal the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and flavours the dumpling as it bakes.
Pie dough
Forms the wrapper that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple juices caramelise at the edges.
Sweet butter
Adds fat that enriches the filling and promotes browning and a rich flavour.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the apples.

The step that matters

Seal the edges of the dough. If the seam is not sealed well, juices leak out during baking and the filling can dry out and lose flavour. A tight seal keeps the steam and juices inside so the apples cook through in their own liquid.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, butter, cinnamon. 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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