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Dessert

Cranberry Dumplings

Cranberry dumplings are small dough pieces cooked in a sweet cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cranberry Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the berries

  1. Combine cranberries, sugar, and water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. Once boiling, drop 1 tablespoon of dumpling mixture on top of the berries.

  2. Cover and boil for 20 minutes without uncovering.

  3. For the dumpling mixture, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and milk.

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

Cranberries
Provide tart flavor and juice that cooks down into the sauce around the dumplings.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the cranberry syrup.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as they cook through.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dumpling dough.

The step that matters

Cover and boil without uncovering. Trapped steam cooks the tops of the dumplings through and lets them rise. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, which can leave the dumplings dense or gummy in the centre.

“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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