Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Fruit Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make a crust similar to apple dumplings.
Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut into oblong pieces with rounded corners.
Place 1 tablespoon of tart preserve in the center of each piece.
Roll the dough around the preserve to form a dumpling.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.
Brush the dumplings with beaten egg while hot and return to the oven to glaze.
Serve hot with pudding 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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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + cherrytop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cherry + eggtop 30% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,611 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 cherry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Cherrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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