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Dessert

Dumplings Made with Apples

Dumplings made with apples, cinnamon, sugar, and lemon peel, baked in a puff pastry crust and served with melted butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Dumplings Made with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dumplings

  1. Make a puff pastry crust with flour and butter.

  2. Roll it out thicker than a silver dollar.

  3. Pare and core the apples, then fill the openings with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon peel.

  4. Wrap each apple in the puff pastry and tie them in separate cloths.

Boil and finish

  1. Boil the dumplings for about one hour until the apples are tender.

  2. Cut a small piece off the top of each dumpling and pour in melted butter.

  3. Replace the piece of crust, place the dumplings in a dish, and sift fine sugar over them.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the apple and steam during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and flakiness to the pastry crust.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening and becoming sweet and aromatic as they cook.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling once the dumplings are cooked.

The step that matters

Boiling the dumplings. Wrapped dumplings must boil long enough for the apples to become tender, while the pastry stays intact. Tying the cloths firmly keeps the pastry sealed so filling does not leak and the dough cooks through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, apple, cinnamon, sugar. 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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