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Dessert

College Dumplings

A sweet bread dumpling with raisins, currants, citron, spices, baked in buttered cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Break the bread into small crumbs and pour two-thirds of the milk over it.

  2. Let it soak for 15 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in the remaining milk.

  2. Add the spices, fruit, sugar, and eggs.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered cups.

  2. Bake.

  3. Serve upside down on a platter.

  4. Dust with sugar.

  5. Enjoy 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  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. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and, with the beaten whites, add lift and a light, airy structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during baking.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and moistens the batter so it bakes tender.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Deflating the whites by stirring vigorously releases the air trapped in them, which is what lifts the dumplings, so the fold should be slow and light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, clove, raisin, 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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