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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

Baked apple dumplings made with raised bread dough, apples, butter, sugar, spices, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Incorporate 1 tablespoon of butter into the raised bread dough.

  2. Roll out the dough. Fold the dough.

  3. Let the dough rise again.

  4. Divide the risen dough into 6 parts.

  5. Roll each part out thin.

Assemble the dumplings

  1. Fill the holes of the apples with sugar and butter.

  2. Wrap the dough around each apple.

  3. Place the wrapped apples in a deep dish.

  4. Let the dumplings sit for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar between the dumplings. Sprinkle small pieces of butter between the dumplings.

  2. Add spices to taste.

  3. Pour 1 cup of water over the dumplings.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Raised bread dough
Forms the wrapper that bakes into a soft, bread-like casing around the apple.
Tart apples
Provide the filling, with tartness that balances the sugar and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the exposed dough and apple brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin and sealing it around each apple. Thin, evenly rolled dough bakes through and browns evenly, while a tight seal keeps the filling and butter from leaking out during baking.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar. 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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