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Dessert

Apple Dumplings

Steamed dumplings made with a suet dough and sliced apples, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift together flour and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Stir in chopped suet and salt.

  3. Add cold water and mix into a smooth, firm dough.

Fill and seal

  1. Roll out the dough thin and line six well-buttered cups.

  2. Fill cups with sliced apples and cover with sugar.

  3. Seal the tops with dough, wetting the edges.

Steam and serve

  1. Place cups in a large stew-pan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

  2. Steam for 45 minutes, then turn out onto a dish.

  3. Sift sugar over the dumplings and 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that wraps the apples.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and rich during steaming.
Sour apples
Provide the fruit filling, with tartness that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and forms a syrup as it melts during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the dough rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Seal the tops with dough, wetting the edges. Wetting the edges helps the dough stick together so the seal holds during steaming. A weak seal lets syrup escape and the filling dry out or leak.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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