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Dessert

Steamed Apple Dumplings

A steamed dumpling made with a dough of flour, sour cream, baking soda, and salt, filled with sliced apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, sour cream, baking soda, and salt to form a dough.

  2. Slice the apples and place them in a pot.

  3. Add enough water to the pot to cook the apples.

Steam and serve

  1. Roll out the dough to cover the apples completely, leaving an opening in the center for steam to escape.

  2. Steam the dumplings until the dough rises several inches thick.

  3. Serve warm on a saucer.

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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + appletop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity to the dough, giving it a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to help the dough rise.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that cooks inside the dough as it steams.

The step that matters

Steam the dumplings until the dough rises. Baking soda reacts with the sour cream's acid to lift the dough, so it must be steamed until it has risen several inches thick. Leaving the center opening lets steam escape so the dough cooks through rather than becoming soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream. 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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