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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of apples wrapped in biscuit dough, simmered in a sweet buttered water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pare, quarter, and core the apples.

  3. Make a rich, stiff biscuit dough and roll it out.

  4. Cut the dough into strips.

Assemble and bake

  1. Wrap 2-3 strips of dough around 4 pieces of apple, pinching the ends together.

  2. In a baking dish, combine 1 quart of water, 1 cup of sugar, and a small piece of butter; bring to a boil.

  3. Place the dumplings in the boiling mixture and bake until the crust and apples are done.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar.

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

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

  2. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the tender fruit filling and release juices that flavour the syrup.
Biscuit dough
Forms a sturdy, flaky crust that wraps and holds the apple during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a syrupy liquid around the dumplings.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Pinching the dough ends together. If the seams open, apple juice and filling can leak into the syrup and the dumplings can lose their shape. Sealing the dough keeps the apple enclosed while it softens and the crust bakes.

Swap the apple

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

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

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