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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumpling

A baked dessert of apples wrapped in pie crust, topped with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dumplings

  1. Core the small apples and place them in a pudding dish.

  2. Make pie crust and wrap each apple in a piece of the crust.

  3. Add a little butter, sugar, and ground cinnamon inside each apple.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. Mix water, butter, sugar, and spices to make a sauce.

  2. Pour some sauce over the dumplings.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done, adding more sauce as it cooks away.

  4. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Small apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and becomes tender as the dumplings bake.
Pie crust
Wraps the apples, giving structure and a flaky, browned outer layer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the sauce turn glossy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce thicken and brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done, adding more sauce as it cooks away. Sauce evaporates during baking, so the dumplings can dry out or scorch. Topping up the liquid keeps the pastry moist and lets the syrup coat the apples evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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