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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

A pastry-wrapped apple dessert baked with sugar, spices, butter, and a sweet water glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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

  1. Roll out the plain pastry very thin and cut it into eight squares.

  2. Pare and core the apples, placing one apple in the center of each square.

  3. Fill each apple cavity with sugar, a few grains of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a bit of butter.

  4. Wet the edges of the pastry with egg white and fold the points over the apple.

Bake

  1. Place the dumplings in a dripping pan and pour around them 1 cup of boiling water mixed with ½ cup of sugar, ¼ cup of butter, and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 50 minutes until the apples are soft.

  3. A few minutes before removing from the oven, brush the tops with egg white and sprinkle with sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

Apples
Soften during baking and provide the main filling and tart-sweet flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and moistens the filling and sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and syrup and helps the surface brown during baking.
Plain pastry
Encloses the apples and forms a crisp, golden shell as it bakes.

The step that matters

Rolling the pastry very thin. Thin pastry bakes crisp and golden while the apple cooks through; thick pastry can stay doughy and underbaked before the apples soften.

Swap the apple

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

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

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