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Dessert

Apple Dumpling

Apple dumpling is a pastry filled with stewed apples, served with sauce or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Apple Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Cut in the lard with a knife.

  3. Add enough ice water or milk to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into large rounds to cover the apples.

  5. Cut out smaller rounds for the tops of the apples, joining the edges neatly.

Prepare the apples

  1. In a pot, combine the apples, sugar, salt, butter, nutmeg, and water.

  2. Steam the apples in this syrup until soft, being careful not to break them.

  3. Allow the apples to cool before covering with pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make two or three small cuts in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

  2. Brush the top with melted butter.

  3. Bake until golden brown at 400°F (200°C).

Serve

  1. Serve with hard sauce and the syrup from cooking the apples, or with cream.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 pastry that encloses the apples.
Lard
Cut into the flour to create a tender, flaky pastry texture.
Apples
Provide the main filling, softening during steaming while holding their shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps form the syrup they cook in.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the syrup and browns the top crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the pastry.

The step that matters

Steam the apples gently in the syrup. Apples cooked too hard will break apart and turn mushy. Gentle steaming softens them while keeping their shape so they hold up inside the pastry.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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