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Apple Dowdy

A thickened apple stew made with molasses, butter, and a flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Dowdy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. In a kettle, combine the apples, molasses, butter, and hot water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and milk to form a paste.

  2. Roll the paste to fit into the kettle.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the paste to the boiling apple mixture.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve without sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Tart apples
Provide the fruit base, softening as they cook in the syrupy liquid.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep, caramel-like flavor to the liquid.
All-purpose flour
Forms the paste that cooks into a soft, dumpling-like topping.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Milk
Moistens the flour into a paste and adds richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Add the paste to the boiling apple mixture. The paste must go into a steadily boiling liquid and the pot stays covered, so the dough steams and cooks through rather than sinking into a soggy, undercooked layer.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, butter, flour, cream, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, flour, cream, milk. 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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