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Boiled Apple Dumplings

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Divide the dough paste into pieces.

  2. Roll out each piece of dough.

  3. Pare and core the apples.

  4. Fill the cavities of the apples with marmalade or jelly.

  5. Place an apple in the center of the dough and close the edges around it.

  6. Tie the dumplings in muslin bags.

  7. Stew the dumplings for one hour.

  8. Serve with hard butter sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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