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English Apple Dumplings

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the suet finely and mix it with the flour to make a paste.

  2. Place a heaping teaspoon of sugar, a little lemon peel, and a pinch of nutmeg inside each dumpling.

  3. Grease a dish well and arrange the dumplings around it.

  4. Spread some drippings over the dumplings and sprinkle light brown sugar thickly on top, adding more at the bottom of the dish.

  5. Pour in 1 pint of water.

  6. Once the dumplings begin to brown, baste them frequently.

  7. Serve on a flat dish.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 (flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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