Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Apple Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples and dough
Heat a pot of water to boiling.
Pare the apples and remove the cores without cutting them in half.
Fill each apple core with brown sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice.
In a bowl, mix suet (or butter) with flour and add just enough water to form a dough.
Roll out the dough to a moderate thickness and cut into circular pieces.
Wrap and boil
Place an apple on one piece of dough and cover it with another piece, sealing the edges tightly.
Wrap each dumpling in a cloth that has been dipped in hot water, tying it securely but leaving space for expansion.
Boil the dumplings in the pot of water for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Serve
Serve hot with cream and sugar or butter and sugar.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter and flour 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
- Apples
- Provide the fruit filling that softens and becomes tender during boiling.
- Suet
- Adds fat to the dough, giving it a rich, tender texture when cooked.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the apple.
- Brown sugar
- Sweetens the apple filling and adds caramel-like flavor as it melts.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple filling.
The step that matters
Sealing and wrapping the dumplings. If the dough edges are not sealed tightly, the filling can leak into the boiling water. Leaving room in the cloth matters because the dough expands as it cooks, and a tight wrap can burst it.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, butter, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, 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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