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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dish of apple dumplings simmered in a sugared water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 the dough

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a rich, stiff biscuit dough by mixing flour, lard, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

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

Assemble and bake

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

  2. In a baking dish, combine 1 quart of water, 1 cup of sugar, and a small piece of butter; 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit dough that wraps the apples.
Lard
Makes the dough tender and flaky by coating the flour particles with fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the dough and the syrup.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to lift the dough as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to leaven the dough.
Apples
Provide the filling, softening and becoming tender as the dumplings bake.

The step that matters

Placing the dumplings in the boiling mixture and baking. The dough must be sealed well around the apples so the syrup does not leak out and the crust sets properly. Keeping the liquid at a boil before the dumplings go in helps the bottom crust cook rather than turn soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, milk, 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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