Skip to main content
Dessert

Up-to-date Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of apples and raisins wrapped in pie crust, topped with lemon icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,920 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Up-to-date 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 the crust

  1. Make a rich pie crust and roll it out thin.

  2. Cut the crust into squares to line muffin rings.

  3. Grease the muffin rings and line them with the squares, letting the corners hang over.

Fill and bake

  1. Chop the apples and raisins finely in a bowl.

  2. Mix the chopped apples, raisins, sugar, and lemon peel to taste.

  3. Fill the mixture into the lined rings and press the corners of the squares together.

  4. Bake until deep yellow at 400°F (200°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Remove to a dish and brush the top of each dumpling with lemon icing.

  2. Serve with cream.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and the tart, fruity flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown as it bakes.
Rich pie crust
Forms the edible shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Pressing the corners of the squares together. If the corners are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak out during baking and the dumplings can lose their shape. A tight seal keeps the juices inside so the filling steams and cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, 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 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes