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Boiled Apple Dumplixg

A boiled dumpling made from mashed potatoes, flour, butter, and sliced apples seasoned with allspice.

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

Boiled Apple Dumplixg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Moisten the mashed potatoes with a little milk and add salt and butter.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a crust.

Assemble and cook

  1. Roll out the crust and place the sliced apples inside, adding a little allspice.

  2. Steam the dumplings in a dish for two hours.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Irish potatoes
Form the soft, starchy base that holds the dough together.
Flour
Gives the crust structure so it holds its shape around the apples.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling and a tender, moist interior when steamed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crust.

The step that matters

Forming the crust. Mixing in flour gradually until the dough just holds together keeps the crust tender. Too much flour makes it dense and tough, while too little leaves it too fragile to wrap the apples.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, butter, egg, flour, apple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, egg, flour, apple. 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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