Name: Baked Apple Dumplings
Ingredients: 1 quart all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons lard (or 1 tablespoon butter); 2 cups milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 egg (for glazing); Powdered sugar (for serving); Juicy tart apples (pared and cored)

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Apple Dumplings

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and salt.
Chop the lard into the flour mixture until crumbly.
Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture, stirring quickly to form a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough to less than ½ inch thick and cut into squares.
Place a prepared apple in the center of each square, then bring the corners together and pinch to seal.
Arrange the dumplings in a buttered baking pan with the seams facing down.
Bake until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.
Brush the tops with beaten egg and return to the oven for 2-3 minutes to glaze.
Dust with powdered sugar and serve hot with rich sweet 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, cream, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.