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Dessert

Boiled Apple Dumplings

A boiled dumpling made with a batter of eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and apple pieces, served hot with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs well with the salt.

  2. Add the milk and 1 cup of flour.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix 2 teaspoons of baking powder with a second cup of flour.

  4. Add the baking powder and flour mixture to the batter.

  5. Add more flour as necessary to make a soft dough.

  6. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

  7. Cut the rolled dough into squares.

Fill and wrap

  1. Place 2-3 quarters of pared apples on each square.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the apples.

  3. Pinch the dough around the apples to seal.

  4. Prepare pudding cloths by wringing them out in cold water and dusting with flour.

  5. Place a dumpling in each cloth, leaving room for swelling.

  6. Tie the cloth tightly around the dumpling.

Boil and serve

  1. Place a saucer in the bottom of the kettle to prevent burning.

  2. Drop the dumplings into a kettle of rapidly boiling water.

  3. Maintain a steady boil for 1 hour.

  4. Serve hot with hard 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the dough sets around the apples.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the dough its body and holds the filling.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the dough.
Apples
Provide the filling, adding moisture and a tart, fruity flavour as they cook.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly around the dumpling. A loose cloth lets water soak into the dough and can let the dumpling spread or fall apart. Leaving room for swelling, as the record notes, lets the dough rise without bursting the wrapping.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, 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.

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