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Dessert

Boiled Cherry Dumplings

A boiled dumpling made from bread sponge, egg, sugar, lard, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Cherry Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine the bread sponge, egg, ¼ cup sugar, and lard in a bowl and knead well, adding flour as needed.

  2. Let the dough rise for 2 hours.

Shape and rise

  1. Shape the dough into dumplings and let them rise for another 2 hours.

Boil in cherries

  1. Bring the cherries, water, and remaining ¼ cup sugar to a boil in a pot.

  2. Drop the dumplings into the boiling mixture and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Do not remove the lid from the pot while boiling.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Bread sponge
Provides yeast for leavening, giving the dumplings a light, airy, bready texture.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure so the dumplings hold their shape while boiling.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and tenderness.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and keeps the crumb soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and the cherry liquid.
Cherries
Supply fruity flavor, tartness, and color to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while boiling. Trapped steam keeps the liquid at a steady boil and cooks the dumplings evenly. Lifting the lid releases steam and lets the temperature drop, which can leave the dumplings heavy or unevenly cooked.

“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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