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Cheery Dumplings

A sweet dumpling made with flour, cherries, lard, milk, sugar, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheery 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the lard into the salted flour.

  3. Add the milk and mix until combined.

  4. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

Fill and bake

  1. Cut into squares and place 2 spoonfuls of stoned cherries in the center of each.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar, bring the edges together, and pinch them closed.

  3. Place the dumplings on a floured baking pan with the joined edges at the bottom.

  4. Bake until done and serve hot.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a flaky, short texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dumplings and adds a light browning on the surface.
Stoned cherries
Provide the fruit filling, adding sweetness and juicy acidity.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Pinching the edges closed. If the seams are not sealed firmly, cherry juice can leak out during baking, leaving the dumplings dry and the filling thin. Placing the joined edges down also helps keep the seams shut as the dough sets.

“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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