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Egg Dumplings for Soup

Egg dumplings made from a thick batter of milk, eggs, flour, salt, and baking soda, dropped into soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Egg Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine milk and beaten eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a smooth, thick batter without lumps.

  3. Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.

  4. Alternatively, mix sour cream, sour milk, beaten eggs, salt, and dissolved baking soda.

  5. Add enough flour to make a very stiff batter.

  6. Drop spoonfuls into broth and boil for 20 minutes, until no raw dough is visible.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the flour into a pourable batter.
Wheat flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the dumplings their body.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the sour dairy to release gas and lighten the dumplings.

The step that matters

Boil until no raw dough is visible. The dumplings must cook through in the simmering liquid. An undercooked centre stays doughy because the flour starch has not gelatinised, so the full 20 minutes matters.

“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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