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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dessert of apples wrapped in biscuit dough and cooked in a sweet buttered water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare, quarter, and core the apples.

  3. Make a rich, stiff biscuit dough using the flour.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut it into strips.

Assemble and bake

  1. Take 4 pieces of apple for each dumpling and wrap 2 or 3 strips of dough around them, pinching the ends together.

  2. In a baking dish, combine the water, sugar, and butter, and bring to a boil on the stove.

  3. Place the dumplings in the boiling mixture and bake until the crust and apples are done.

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

Apples
Provide the filling and fruit flavor that the dough wraps around.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the stiff biscuit dough that encloses the apples.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup the dumplings bake in and adds flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness in the syrup and dough.

The step that matters

Placing the dumplings in the boiling mixture and baking until done. The dough must be sealed well so the syrup does not leak out, and the mixture must be boiling before the dumplings go in so the crust starts cooking immediately. Baking until the apples are tender and the crust is browned ensures both are fully cooked.

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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