Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓
Apple Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Peel and core the apples.
Fill each apple with apricot jam.
Wrap the apples in very thinly rolled-out puff pastry.
Brush the pastry with beaten egg.
Shape the wrapped apples to resemble real apples using coils of thin puff pastry.
Add a piece of cinnamon as a stalk for each apple.
Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
Glaze with sugar before serving.
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.
-
Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together777 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
-
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,598 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
-
Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together618 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
-
Egg + cinnamontop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,058 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
-
Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,712 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,058 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
More apple dumplings recipes
You might also like
Apple Pudding256 recipes
Apple Cake80 recipes
Apple Meringue75 recipes
Cinnamon Rolls71 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.