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Dessert

Cherry Dumplings

Cherry dumplings are sweet pastry pockets filled with cherries, baked in a sugar‑cornstarch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dumplings

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into rounds.

  5. Place a spoonful of cherries in the center of each round and pinch the dough together to seal.

Bake and serve

  1. In a baking dish, mix sugar and cornstarch.

  2. Place the dumplings well apart in the dish and add bits of butter on top of each dumpling.

  3. Pour boiling water over the dumplings to cover them.

  4. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden.

  5. Serve with the sauce left in the dish, adding a few more cherries.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 dough's structure, holding the dumplings together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the dough rise and turn tender.
Butter
Cut into the dough for tenderness, and melts over the dumplings to enrich the topping.
Cherries
Provide the fruit filling, adding tart flavor and juice that becomes part of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the liquid to form the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Pinch the dough tightly around the cherries. A weak seal lets cherry juice escape during baking, so the filling can leak out and the dumplings can lose their shape. A firm seal keeps the juice inside, where it thickens with the cornstarch into the sauce.

“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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