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Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

A sweet dumpling made with bread crumbs, suet, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and lemon juice, boiled and served with sugar.

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

Lemon Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the grated bread crumbs, chopped suet, moist sugar, salt, flour, and grated lemon rind together in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs and strained lemon juice, stirring well.

Cook and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into small buttered cups.

  2. Tie the cups down with a cloth dipped in flour.

  3. Boil the cups for 45 minutes.

  4. Turn the dumplings out onto a dish.

  5. Sprinkle the dumplings with sifted sugar.

  6. Serve the dumplings with wine 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  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 butter 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the dumplings set as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the dumpling together.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the dumplings moist and tender.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, moist texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Tie the cups down with a cloth dipped in flour. A floured cloth sealed snugly over the cups keeps water out while the dumplings boil, and the flour helps keep the cloth from sticking. A loose cover lets water seep in and makes the dumplings soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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