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Dessert

Fruit Dumplings

Fruit dumplings made with a biscuit dough, filled with fruit, baked in a sweet butter and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, cottolene, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add milk gradually until the dough is as stiff as biscuit dough.

Prepare the filling and syrup

  1. In a baking dish, add boiling water.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, butter, and nutmeg until dissolved.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Roll the dough to ⅛ inch thick and cut into circles the size of a tea plate.

  2. Place sliced fruit in the center of each circle, season with sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

  3. Dampen the edges of the dough and pinch together to form dumplings.

Bake

  1. Place about six dumplings in the pan with hot syrup and bake at 300°F (150°C), basting occasionally.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and fat.
Cottolene or vegetable shortening
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and flaky.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dough as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and syrup and helps form a syrup around the dumplings.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the filling and syrup.

The step that matters

Add milk gradually until the dough is as stiff as biscuit dough. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to shape, while too little makes it dry and crumbly. Adding milk slowly lets you stop at the right stiffness.

Swap the apple

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

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

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