Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Apple Dumpling

A baked apple dumpling made with tart apples, pie crust, sugar, nutmeg or cinnamon, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,790 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Apple Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dumplings

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples.

  3. Roll out the pie crust and cut it into pieces for dumplings.

  4. Place an apple on each piece of crust.

  5. Fill the core of each apple with sugar and sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.

  6. Bring the corners of the crust up over the top of the apple and seal it.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a deep baking dish generously.

  2. Arrange the dumplings in the dish as close as possible.

  3. Cream together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of white sugar, then pour over the dumplings.

  4. Pour cold water around the dumplings to prevent sticking.

  5. Bake for nearly two hours.

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 + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Fine tart apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and flavors each dumpling as it bakes.
Plain pie crust
Wraps each apple, forming a pastry shell that bakes crisp around the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sauce brown and turn glossy as it bakes.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with the butter, forms the syrup that bastes the dumplings.

The step that matters

Arrange the dumplings close together. Packing the dumplings tightly keeps them upright and their seams sealed, so the pastry holds its shape while the sauce forms around them.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes