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Dessert

Cherry Roley-poley

A steamed roll filled with cherries, sweetened with sugar, served with cream or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cherry Roley-poley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat your steamer.

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

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

  4. Stir in milk to form a dough and roll it out to ⅔ inch thick.

  5. Pit and stew cherries, adding sugar to taste.

  6. Spread the cherries thickly over the dough.

Roll and steam

  1. Roll the dough up carefully to keep the cherries inside.

  2. Wrap the roll in a cloth and sew it loosely with coarse thread.

  3. Place the roll on a plate in the steamer and steam for 1.5 hours.

  4. Slice and serve with cream or sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and rises slightly as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, lightening the dough so it becomes soft rather than dense.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a tender, crumbly texture in the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a pliable dough and adds moisture and richness.
Cherries
Provide the filling, adding moisture, tartness and fruity flavor to the roll.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough up carefully. If the roll is wrapped too tightly or handled roughly, the cherry filling can burst out and the dough can tear, so the roll may lose its shape and filling while steaming.

“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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