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Dessert

Apple Dumpling

A boiled dumpling of suet dough filled with apples, seasoned with nutmeg or cloves, served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Chop the suet finely.

  2. Mix the suet with flour and salt, then add cold water to form a dough.

  3. Roll the dough thicker than pie crust.

Assemble the dumplings

  1. Peel, quarter, and slice the apples.

  2. Divide the dough into two pieces and enclose the apples in each piece.

  3. Season with nutmeg or cloves.

  4. Wrap each dumpling in a floured or wet cloth and tie with cord.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for two hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter mixed with a little water and sugar, flavored with nutmeg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and moist as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure, holding the apples inside during boiling.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling and moisture that softens as the dumplings cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the butter-and-water sauce served with the dumplings.

The step that matters

Boil for two hours. The dumplings must be kept at a steady boil for the full time so the suet-based dough cooks through and sets around the apples. Boiling too gently or too briefly leaves the dough underdone and the apples firm.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg, butter, 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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