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Apple Dumplings.— Boiled

Boiled apple dumplings made with a stiff dough and filled with sugar and an almond.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings.— Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Stir the baking soda into the sour milk until it foams.

  2. Mix the flour, sour milk, and cream to form a stiff dough that can be rolled out.

Fill and cook

  1. Peel and halve the apples, scooping out the cores.

  2. Fill the scooped-out apple halves with sugar and half an almond.

  3. Drop the filled apples into boiling water and cook until done.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the stiff dough that wraps the apples.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to make the dough rise and stay tender.
Cream
Adds fat, which softens the dough and gives a richer texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, helping the dough rise.

The step that matters

Drop the filled apples into boiling water and cook until done.. The dough must be sealed around the apples so it does not split or go soggy. Boiling water cooks the dough and fruit together, so the water should be kept at a steady boil.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, cream, 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.

More apple dumplings recipes

Baked 92Boiled 30Steamed 8 See all 219 →

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