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Potato Dumplings

A simple dish of mashed potato balls boiled in water and finished with browned butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine cold mashed potatoes, eggs, bread crumbs, and browned butter.

  2. Stir together and add flour until the mixture is stiff.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the balls into boiling water and let them boil until cooked through.

  2. Remove from water and pour browned butter over the dumplings before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Cold mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that give the dumplings their body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the dumplings hold their shape while boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the dough hold together in a stiff mixture.
Browned butter
Adds a nutty, toasted aroma and rich fat flavor to the finished dumplings.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture so the dumplings can be shaped without falling apart.

The step that matters

Adding flour until the mixture is stiff. Too little flour leaves the dough soft, so the dumplings can break apart in boiling water. Too much makes them dense and tough, since flour starch and gluten develop with extra handling and absorb more liquid. Add it gradually and stop once the dough holds its shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, flour. 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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