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Apple Dumplings

Apple dumplings made with lard, milk, flour, sugar, cinnamon, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift together flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Work in lard with your fingertips.

  3. Gradually add milk, mixing with a knife to form a nice dough.

  4. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into squares.

Fill and bake

  1. Place a peeled and cored apple in the center of each square.

  2. Fill the centers with sugar and cinnamon, then pinch the dough together.

  3. Place in a buttered baking pan, dot with sugar and butter, and bake until nicely browned.

  4. Serve with milk.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 dough that wraps the apple.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and flaky.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so it bakes light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the ingredients bind into a dough.
Apple (in the method)
Becomes soft and sweet-tart inside the pastry as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pinch the dough closed around the apple. Any gap in the seal lets sugar and juices leak out during baking, so the filling can dry or burn and the dumpling can lose its shape.

“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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