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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumpling

A baked dessert of tart apples wrapped in pastry crust, simmered in sugar and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the tart apples.

  2. Cover each apple with a good pastry crust.

  3. Place the apples in a baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour 1 cup of sugar and 2 cups of hot water over the apples.

  2. Baste the apples from time to time until they are soft and the crust is a rich brown.

  3. Serve with 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. 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
Soften during baking and provide the tart fruit flavour that balances the sweet syrup.
Pastry crust
Encloses the apples and browns in the oven, forming a crisp outer shell.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and contributes to the rich browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Basting the apples. Basting spreads the sugar and water syrup over the crust, helping it brown evenly and keeping the apples moist while they soften. Stop too early and the apples may stay firm; let the syrup dry out and the crust can scorch.

“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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