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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

Apple dumplings are apples wrapped in puff pastry, boiled or steamed, filled with sugar and butter, and served with powdered sugar and optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat your steamer or pot of boiling water.

  2. Peel the apples and remove the cores.

  3. Wrap each apple in puff pastry and tie it in a piece of cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam the wrapped apples for one hour.

  2. Before serving, remove the cloths and cut a small piece from each dumpling.

  3. Fill the opening with sugar and fresh butter, then replace the piece of pastry.

  4. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with liquid sauce or sweetened cream if desired.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 filling that softens and turns tender during steaming.
Puff pastry
Encloses the apple and bakes into a flaky, crisp-edged wrapper around the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling taste balanced against the apple's tartness.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts into the cooked apple.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth around each apple. A snug, even wrap keeps the pastry closed and the apple intact while it cooks. A loose cloth lets water in and pastry can open or go soggy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, sauce. 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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