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.
Prepare the dough
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and salt.
Chop the lard into the flour mixture.
Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.
Quickly mix until just stiff enough to roll out to less than ½ inch thick.
Assemble and bake
Cut into squares and place a tart apple in the center of each.
Bring the corners of the squares together and pinch to seal.
Place in a buttered baking pan with the seams down.
Bake until golden brown.
Brush with beaten egg and return to the oven for 2-3 minutes to glaze.
Finish and serve
Dust with powdered sugar and serve hot with sweet sauce.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + appletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,104 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
- Lard
- Cut into the flour to create tenderness and a flaky texture in the dough.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and helps bind the dough together.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to leaven the dough.
- Tart apples
- Provide the filling, with their acidity balancing the sweetness of the dish.
The step that matters
Quickly mix the dough. Overworking dough develops gluten and makes it tough, while the baking soda and cream of tartar begin reacting as soon as they meet liquid, so mixing briefly keeps the dough tender and lets the rise happen in the oven.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, cream, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, cream, sugar, egg. 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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