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Dessert

Rolled Apple Dumpling

A steamed dumpling filled with quartered apples, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Rolled Apple Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Stir in milk to form a dough; roll out to ½ inch thick.

Fill and steam

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Place apple quarters on the dough, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and bits of butter.

  3. Roll the dough over the apples, sealing the ends tightly.

  4. Steam the dumpling for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  5. Serve with molasses or your choice of sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 rolled.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to help it rise and lighten.
Unsalted butter
Cut into the flour to create a tender, flaky texture in the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and becomes pliable.
Sour apples
Provide the fruit filling, and their tartness balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them soften and caramelize during steaming.

The step that matters

Sealing the dough over the apples. If the seams are not sealed tightly, syrup and juices can leak out during steaming, leaving the dumpling dry and the filling under-flavored.

Swap the apple

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

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

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