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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

Apple dumplings made with snow apples, flour, lard, sugar, and baking powder, baked in a buttered dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix and sift flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Cut in the lard with your fingertips until crumbly.

  4. Gradually add cold water, mixing with a knife to form a soft dough.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured board and roll to 1 inch thick.

  2. Cut out circles with a large biscuit cutter.

  3. Place a peeled and cored snow apple in the center of each circle.

  4. Enclose the apples by pressing the edges of the dough together.

  5. Shape each dumpling into a ball and place them in a buttered baking dish, 2 inches apart.

Bake and serve

  1. Sift sugar around the dumplings.

  2. Pour cold water over them.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes, basting three times with the liquid in the pan.

  4. Serve with Hard, Apricot, or Creamy 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lard
Cut into the flour to create short, tender layers in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Snow apples
Soften as they bake and provide the fruit filling inside each dumpling.
Sugar
Sweetens the dumplings and helps form a syrup with the baking liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water to the dough. Mixing with a knife and stopping once the dough just holds together keeps it soft. Overworking develops gluten, which makes the dumplings tough.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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