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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

A baked or steamed dessert of apples wrapped in shortcake dough, sweetened with sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 282 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

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 the dough for strawberry shortcake.

  2. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll each piece out separately.

  3. Peel and core the apples.

Assemble

  1. Fill the centers of the apples with sugar and grate a little nutmeg on each apple.

  2. Wrap each apple in the dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour, or steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with 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. Strawberry + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Strawberry + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Strawberry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dough for strawberry shortcake
Encloses each apple, forming a tender pastry wrapper as it cooks.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening as they cook and releasing their juices into the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices from the apples as they cook.

The step that matters

Wrapping each apple in the dough. The dough must fully enclose each apple with no gaps or thin spots, so syrupy juices stay inside and the pastry bakes evenly rather than leaking or drying out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against strawberry, apple, 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.

More apple dumplings recipes

Baked 92Boiled 30Steamed 8 See all 219 →

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