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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of apples wrapped in pie crust, glazed with a butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Prepare the pie crust by following the puff paste recipe, using ¼ less butter.

  2. Roll out the crust thinly and cut it into square pieces.

Assemble the dumplings

  1. Enclose each apple in a square of crust, wrapping it tightly and pinching to seal.

  2. Place the dumplings in a buttered pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the crust is a delicate brown.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, sugar, and hot water to make the sauce.

  3. Baste the dumplings with the sauce periodically.

  4. After the last basting, let the dumplings bake for an additional 5 minutes.

  5. Serve in the same dish for a glazed finish with syrup.

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the filling that softens and becomes tender as the dumplings bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crust brown and taste savoury-sweet.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it caramelise to a glossy, syrupy glaze.
Pie crust
Encloses the apples and bakes into a flaky, browned pastry wrapper.

The step that matters

Basting the dumplings with the sauce. Basting spreads the sugary sauce over the crust as it bakes, building a glossy, browned surface. Adding it too late or skipping it leaves the finish dull and the sauce unabsorbed.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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