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Dessert

Apple Dumplings, Baked

Baked apple dumplings made with tart apples, pie crust, sugar, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Apple Dumplings, Baked

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

  1. Peel and core the tart apples.

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

  3. Place an apple on each piece of crust.

  4. Fill the core of each apple with sugar and sprinkle nutmeg or cinnamon on top.

Assemble

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

  2. Butter a deep baking dish and arrange the dumplings closely together.

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

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

Bake

  1. Bake for nearly 2 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

Tart apples
Hold their shape while baking and add acidity that balances the sweetness.
Plain pie crust
Wraps each apple and bakes into a tender, flaky shell.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form a buttery sauce around the dumplings.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with the butter, forms the syrup that bakes around the dumplings.
Nutmeg or cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the apple filling.

The step that matters

Seal the crust fully around each apple. A tight seal keeps the sugar filling and butter syrup inside the dumpling, so the apple cooks in its own juices instead of leaking into the dish.

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.

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