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Plum Dumplings Baked

Baked dumplings made from ripe plums encased in biscuit dough, sweetened with syrup and spices, served with cream or hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Dumplings Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dumplings

  1. Remove the seed from the plums.

  2. Roll out the biscuit dough thinly and cut into squares large enough to cover 4 to 6 plums.

  3. Sprinkle each square with 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  4. Bring up the corners of the dough and pinch and twist to seal.

  5. Place the dumplings in a baking pan close together.

Make the syrup and bake

  1. In a separate pot, combine 1 pint of water and ¾ pound of sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Pour the syrup over the dumplings until it reaches halfway up their sides.

  3. Sprinkle cinnamon, allspice, and a dash of nutmeg on top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 50 minutes.

  5. Serve with cream or hard 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Thoroughly ripe plums
Provide the sweet, soft fruit filling that cooks down inside the dough.
Biscuit dough
Forms a tender, flaky wrapper that seals around the plums while baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dumplings and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that moistens them.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, 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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