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Dessert

Baked Apple Dumplings

A baked dish of apple-filled dough dumplings cooked in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the butter and lard mixture, then enough sweet milk or water to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into ½ inch sheets.

Assemble the dumplings

  1. Place a quarter of an apple on a square of dough, sprinkle with sugar, and press the edges together firmly.

  2. Place the dumplings in a deep pan, sprinkle with a little sugar, and add a small piece of butter on top of each.

Bake

  1. Fill the pan with boiling water, leaving the tops of the dumplings uncovered.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that wraps the apple.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lifts the dough so it bakes up light.
Butter and lard mixture
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and flaky.
Tart apples
Provide the filling, with tartness balancing the sweet sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Pressing the dough edges together firmly. If the seams are not sealed well, the filling can leak out and the apple can release juice into the pan. A tight seal keeps the apple enclosed while the dough sets in the oven.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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