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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dish of apples wrapped in raised dough, sweetened with sugar and butter, baked with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter 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

6 apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Incorporate shortening into the raised dough.

  2. Roll out the dough, fold the dough, and set the dough aside to rise.

  3. Divide the dough into 6 parts.

  4. Roll each part out thin.

Fill and assemble

  1. Fill the cored apples with sugar and butter.

  2. Wrap the dough around the apples and seal the wrapped apples well.

  3. Place the wrapped apples folded side down in a deep dish.

  4. Let the dumplings rise until light.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar between the apples, add small pieces of butter between the apples, and add any desired spices between the apples.

  2. Pour 1 cup of water over the dumplings.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 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

Raised dough
Its yeast-leavened structure rises and becomes light and tender around the filling.
Shortening
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and flaky.
Tart apples
Hold their shape when baked and give a tangy contrast to the sweet filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelize and brown.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enhances flavor and browning in the filling.

The step that matters

Let the dumplings rise until light. Yeast dough needs enough proofing to become airy; underproofed dough stays dense and heavy, while overproofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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