Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Dumplings

Apple dumplings are apples wrapped in pie crust, boiled, and served with pudding sauce or butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the tart apples and remove the cores.

  2. Fill the holes with sugar.

  3. Make a pie crust and wrap each apple in pieces of the crust.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the wrapped apples in cloth that is floured on the inside.

  2. Boil the dumplings in water for one hour.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce or butter and sugar.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Tart apples
Provide the fruit that softens and flavors each dumpling as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and sits in the cored holes to flavor the apple as it cooks.
Pie crust
Wraps each apple to form a pastry casing that holds its shape during boiling.
Flour
Dusts the cloth so the dumpling does not stick to it during boiling.

The step that matters

Tie the wrapped apples in cloth that is floured on the inside.. If the cloth is loose or not floured, the crust can stick or tear and the dumpling may lose its shape while boiling. A snug tie keeps the wrapping sealed.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, sauce. 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.

More apple dumplings recipes

Baked 92Boiled 30Steamed 8 See all 219 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes