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Dessert

Excellent Apple Dumplings

Steamed apple dumplings made with a stiff batter of egg, buttermilk, flour, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Excellent Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix egg, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, and flour in a bowl until a stiff batter forms.

  2. Grease cups with butter and place a quartered, cored apple in each cup.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour batter over each apple until covered.

  2. Steam the cups over boiling water until cooked through.

  3. Serve with 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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the dumplings structure as they set.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter's structure, which sets around the apple as it cooks.
Apple
Provides fruit flavor and moisture inside each dumpling.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. The batter must set fully in the steam. Undercooked flour and egg stay gummy and dense, so the dumpling needs enough time over steady boiling water.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, buttermilk, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, buttermilk, flour, butter. 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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