Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Apple Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
Peel the sour apples and remove the cores, keeping them whole.
Fill the openings with brown sugar.
Roll out the pie crust to ¼ inch thick and cut into squares.
Place the apples in the center of each square and seal the crust tightly around them.
Steam the dumplings for 30 minutes or until the apples are soft.
Serve with hard sauce or custard sauce.
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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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together965 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sauce):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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