Name: Baked Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: 1 quart flour; 1 tablespoon lard; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 cups milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; ¼ teaspoon salt

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Sift the flour with the cream of tartar.
Chop in the lard and butter.
Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.
Moisten quickly to form a dough less than ½ inch thick.
Cut into squares and place a peeled and cored tart apple in the center of each square.
Bring the corners of the square together to enclose the apple.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes

Spice Cake344 recipes

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Baked Apple Dumplings