Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Slump

A boiled apple dessert covered in biscuit dough, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Slump

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples, then place them in a dish and cover with water.

  2. Bring the apples to a boil on the stove.

Make and cook the dumpling

  1. Make a biscuit dough by mixing flour, butter, and sugar until crumbly.

  2. Pat or roll the dough to about 1 inch thick, making a hole in the center.

  3. Cover the boiling apples with the dough immediately.

  4. Cover tightly and boil for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, rub together flour, butter, and sugar.

  2. Pour boiling water into the mixture while stirring until it thickens.

  3. Season with salt and nutmeg or any preferred seasoning.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the biscuit dough and thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and sauce and helps browning.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and flavors the dish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Covering the boiling apples with the dough immediately. Dough placed on boiling liquid starts cooking on the surface right away, so it steams and sets evenly. Delaying lets the apples cool and the dough cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More apple dumpling recipes

Baked 22Sauce 5Rolled 5Steamed 5Rice 4 See all 55 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes