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Dessert

Apple Dumplings in Batter

A baked apple dish where peeled apples are covered with a batter of flour, milk, eggs, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Dumplings in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the peeled and cored apples in a baking dish.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir the baking powder into the flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks lightly, then add the milk, melted butter, and flour mixture.

  3. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter over the apples.

  2. Cover the dish with a pan to prevent browning too fast.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lift and a light, airy structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and turn light as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure as it bakes around the apples.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a pourable batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Cooking apples
Soften during baking and provide the fruit filling beneath the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the batter lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a denser, flatter result. Fold gently until just combined.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, flour. 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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