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Dessert

Steamed Dumpling

A steamed dumpling filled with tart apples and served with a butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Dumpling

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and quarter ripe, tart apples and place them in a deep dish with a little water.

  2. Make a crust using sour cream or buttermilk, or any nice baking powder recipe, rolled about an inch thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the apples with the crust and steam for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with a sauce made of ⅓ cup butter and ⅔ cup sugar, stirred to a 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Tart apples
Provide the main filling, with tartness that balances the sweet sauce.
Sour cream or rich buttermilk
Adds acidity and tenderness to the crust dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the crust rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it blend into a smooth cream.

The step that matters

Steaming the covered dumpling. The crust must be sealed over the apples and steamed long enough to cook through. If the lid is loose or heat is uneven, the dough can turn gummy or the apples can stay firm.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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