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Dessert

College Dumplings

Sweet bread dumplings made with butter, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

College Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Break the bread into small crumbs, do not grate it.

  2. Pour ⅔ of the milk over the crumbs and let it soak for 15 minutes or more.

  3. Melt the butter in the remaining milk.

Make the batter

  1. Add the melted butter, spices, lemon rind, brown sugar, and eggs to the soaked bread, mixing well.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in buttered cups at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Serve upside down on a platter and sift sugar over them.

  3. They are eaten with a liquid 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form the soft body of the dumplings.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, as beaten whites, add lift and a light set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so they soften and blend into the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites trap air that makes the dumplings rise and set light. Overmixing or deflating them with vigorous stirring leaves the dumplings dense.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, egg. 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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