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Dessert

Grenades with Cherries

A fried bread dish served with a cherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Grenades with Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the dinner rolls in half and trim the crusts to shape them like eggs.

  2. Soak the halves in a mixture of cream, sugar, vanilla, and egg yolks.

  3. Drain the rolls carefully, dip them in beaten eggs, and coat with breadcrumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry in clarified butter until golden brown, then drain and sprinkle with vanilla sugar.

  2. For the cherry sauce, combine cherries, powdered sugar, red wine, cinnamon, and lemon zest in a skillet.

  3. Bring to a boil, then thicken with potato flour mixed with cold water.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the soaking custard and beaten eggs bind the breadcrumb coating.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the soaked rolls, giving a tender interior.
Potato flour
Thickens the cherry sauce to a glossy, spoonable consistency.
Sour cherries
Provide tart fruit flavor that balances the sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the cherry sauce with potato flour. Potato flour must be mixed into cold water first, otherwise it clumps when added to hot liquid. Once the sauce boils, it thickens quickly, so it should be stirred in gradually and removed from heat when it reaches the desired consistency.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, egg, butter, red wine, cinnamon):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, egg, butter, red wine, cinnamon. 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.

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