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Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

Lemon dumplings are sweet bread dumplings with lemon, apple, suet, and eggs, boiled and served with Fairy Butter.

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

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice of the lemon onto the sugar.

  2. Finely chop the lemon zest.

  3. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, chopped suet, sugar, lemon zest, grated apple, flour, and beaten eggs until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Divide the mixture into square pieces of cotton cloth.

  2. Tie the pieces securely.

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

  4. Boil for 45 minutes.

  5. 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 bulk and structure that holds the dumpling together.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, giving a moist, tender texture as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and a fresh, mild sweetness to the dumplings.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Contributes bright acidity and aroma from the juice and zest.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth pieces securely. If the cloth is loose, water can enter and the dumplings can swell, lose their shape, or break apart during the long boil.

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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