Name: Blackberry Slump
Ingredients: 1 quart flour; 2 quarts blackberries; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1½ cups sugar; 2 eggs; 2 cups water; milk

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 ↓

Blackberry Slump

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Sift the flour and baking powder 2 or 3 times.
Stir in the well-beaten eggs and add enough milk to make a stiff batter.

Cook and serve

Stew the blackberries with the sugar and water until slightly soft.
Drop the batter molded into dumplings into the blackberry mixture.
Cover tightly and boil for 20 minutes.
Serve with cream and sugar or plain sugar.

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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

Flour: Forms the structure of the dumplings once the batter is set by cooking.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Eggs: Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the dumplings.
Blackberries: Provide the fruit base, releasing juice that forms the sauce around the dumplings.
Sugar: Sweetens the blackberries and balances their natural tartness.

The step that matters

Drop the batter molded into dumplings into the blackberry mixture. The batter must be stiff enough to hold its shape when dropped into simmering fruit. A loose batter spreads and dissolves into the sauce instead of forming separate dumplings.

“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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Blackberry Slump