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Dessert

Jam Turnovers

A baked pastry filled with jam, made from flour, baking powder, margarine, sugar, milk, and sprinkled with caster 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 ↓

Jam Turnovers

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

  3. Cut in the margarine until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

  4. Stir in the sugar and add enough milk to form a dough.

  5. Roll out the dough very thinly and cut into rounds.

Fill and bake

  1. Place a small amount of jam in the center of each round.

  2. Dampen half the edge of each round, fold over, and press the edges together.

  3. Place on a flat baking tray and bake until golden.

  4. Sprinkle with caster sugar before serving.

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. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the turnovers rise and become light.
Margarine
Cut into the flour to create tender, flaky layers and a short texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and can be rolled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Press the edges together after dampening. Water on the dough edge helps the two halves bond, and a firm seal keeps the jam from leaking out during baking.

“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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