Skip to main content
Dessert

Cranberry Roll

A steamed roll made from a stiff dough, spread with cranberry jam and served with cherry juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cranberry and cherry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Cranberry Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, butter, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until a stiff dough forms.

  3. Roll out the dough into a long sheet.

Fill and steam

  1. Spread cranberry jam thickly over the dough.

  2. Roll the dough up tightly and place it in a steamer.

  3. Steam for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce flavored with cherry juice.

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. Cranberry + cherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that leavens the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to lift the dough as it steams.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and softens its texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the dough its structure.
Cranberry jam
Adds tart sweetness and moisture to the filling inside the roll.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough up tightly. A loose roll can leave gaps and let the jam leak out during steaming. Tight rolling keeps the filling inside and gives an even spiral.

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, cranberry, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, cranberry, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Cherry PuddingCherry Pudding108 recipesCherry IceCherry Ice24 recipesCranberry IceCranberry Ice11 recipesCherry Ice CreamCherry Ice Cream8 recipes