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Steamed Apple Dumplings

A steamed dumpling made from flour dough wrapped around cooking apples, served with sauce.

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. Mix the flour, sour cream, baking soda, and salt to form a dough.

  2. Slice the apples and place them in a pot with enough water to cook them.

Steam and serve

  1. Roll out the dough to cover the apples completely.

  2. Make a small opening in the center of the dough to allow steam to escape.

  3. Steam until the dough rises several inches thick.

  4. Serve with 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. 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 structure of the dough that wraps the apples.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and tenderizes the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
Cooking apples
Provide the filling, softening and becoming tender as they cook.

The step that matters

Make a small opening in the center of the dough. The vent lets steam escape from the sealed dough. Without it, pressure can build inside, which may tear the dough or leave the filling unevenly cooked.

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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