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Dessert

Baked Cherry Dumplings

A baked pastry filled with cherries and sugar.

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 ↓

Baked Cherry 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

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 to form a dough.

  4. Roll the dough into a sheet ¼ inch thick and cut into 4-inch squares.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Place 2 tablespoons of cherries in the center of each square and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Fold up the edges of the dough and pinch them together.

  3. Place the dumplings seam-side down on a floured baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes or until browned.

  2. Serve hot with a good 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the cherries and bakes into a sturdy casing.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a flaky texture to the dough.
Fresh milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and bakes with a soft crumb.
Stoned cherries
Provide fruity moisture and tartness that bakes into the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps the exterior brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pinching the dough edges closed. If the seams are not sealed well, the juices from the cherries can leak out during baking, leaving the filling dry and the dumplings less tidy.

“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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