Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of dough-covered apples sweetened with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add salt, butter, and milk; rub butter into dry flour.

  3. Beat egg whites until stiff, fold into mixture, then add sugar.

  4. Roll out dough pieces large enough to cover each apple.

Bake and serve

  1. Place dumplings in greased baking pan, sprinkle with sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

  2. Bake until golden, remove from pan, serve on pie plates with 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and turn light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the dough.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, adding lightness to the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together.
Apples
Provide the filling, softening and sweetening as they bake.

The step that matters

Beat egg whites until stiff, fold into mixture. Stiffly beaten whites hold air bubbles that lighten the dough. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps those bubbles from collapsing and preserves the lift.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like