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Dessert

Blackberry Roly Poly

A boiled pastry roll filled with blackberries and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Blackberry Roly Poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add milk gradually, stirring until a dough forms.

  4. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick and 3 times as long as it is wide.

Fill and roll

  1. Spread blackberries over the dough and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Roll the dough up tightly, pinching the ends to seal.

  3. Wrap the roll in a floured cloth that has been wrung out in hot water.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the wrapped roll into a pot of boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dough's structure, which holds the fruit inside the roll while it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and turn light rather than dense.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderizing the dough and keeping it crumbly.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a workable dough and adds richness.
Blackberries
Supply the fruit filling, adding moisture, tartness and flavor to the roll.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough up tightly and sealing the ends. A loose roll lets blackberry juice escape into the boiling water and leaves gaps in the dough. Tight rolling and pinched ends keep the filling contained as the dough cooks.

“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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