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Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

Lemon dumplings are boiled dumplings made with grated bread, suet, sugar, lemon, apple, flour, and eggs.

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 ↓

Lemon Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, combine grated bread, chopped suet, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, grated apple, flour, and beaten eggs, and mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Divide the mixture into square pieces and tie them in cotton cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into boiling water with a tin plate underneath to prevent sticking.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with 'Fairy Butter' made with brown sugar.

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. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Grated bread
Provides the body of the dumpling, soaking up moisture and holding its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when boiled.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and a light fruity sweetness to the dumpling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Tying the dumplings in cloth. The cloth must be tied firmly so the dumplings keep their shape and don't break apart or absorb too much water while boiling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, lemon, flour, 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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