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Dessert

65 Apple Dumplings

A baked pastry filled with apples, sugar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

65 Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose good baking apples of similar size; peel them thinly and remove the core.

  2. Roll out the pastry to ¼ inch thickness and cut out six rounds, each large enough to cover half an apple.

  3. Fill the center of each apple with castor sugar and one clove.

Assemble and bake

  1. Moisten the edge of the pastry with water, place another round on top, and seal the edges neatly.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dust with castor 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. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Short crust pastry
Forms a sealed, crisp, golden shell that holds the filling while it bakes.
Apples
Soften as they bake, providing moisture and tender fruit flavor inside the pastry.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and melts into a syrup in the centre of each apple.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, spicy aroma to the baked apple.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry edges neatly. Pastry edges must be moistened so they bond; gaps let the sugar syrup leak out during baking and can leave the dumpling open or misshapen.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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