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Dessert

Steamed Cherry Cups

A sweet pastry cup made from dough, filled with cherries, and steamed, served with sweetened cream or cherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Cherry Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together several times.

  2. Mix to a soft dough with cold water.

Assemble the cups

  1. Butter some custard cups and drop in a little of the dough.

  2. Add a tablespoon of cherries.

  3. Cover with more dough.

  4. Place in a steamer. Cover.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in the oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with sweetened cream or a sauce of cherry juice thickened with cornstarch.

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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough around the cherries.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the dough rise and turn light.
Cherries
Provide fruit flavour and moisture inside the steamed cups.

The step that matters

Covering the cups before steaming. Steam needs to be trapped around the cups to cook the dough through. If the cups are left uncovered, the tops can dry out and the dough may cook unevenly.

“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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