Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Dumplings

Apple dumplings are apples wrapped in puff pastry, boiled and served with fine sugar.

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

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples and pastry

  1. Prepare puff pastry and roll it out.

  2. Peel and quarter the apples, removing the cores.

  3. Cut pieces of pastry to wrap each apple, ensuring they are well-covered.

Boil and wrap

  1. Boil a pot of water.

  2. Dip a clean cloth in the boiling water.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the cloth.

  4. Wrap each dumpling in the cloth.

  5. Tie the cloth securely around each dumpling.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the dumplings in the boiling water.

  2. Keep the water boiling.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes for small apples or 1 hour for large apples.

  4. Remove the dumplings from the water.

  5. Place them in a dish.

  6. Sprinkle with fine sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  3. 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

Large apples
Provide the filling that softens and turns sweet-tart during the long boil.
Puff pastry
Wraps the fruit and bakes into a flaky, layered casing when cooked.
Flour
Dusted on the cloth so the wrapping does not stick to the pastry.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness on the finished dumplings, dissolving slightly from the surface.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling. Boiling water transfers heat steadily to the wrapped dumplings. If the water drops to a simmer, the pastry cooks unevenly and can turn soggy, so the apples may stay firm inside.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

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