Name: Egg Dumplings for Soup
Ingredients: ½ pint milk; 2 large eggs, well beaten; Wheat flour, as needed to make a smooth, thick batter; Salt, to taste

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

½ pint milk
2 large eggs, well beaten
Wheat flour, as needed to make a smooth, thick batter
Salt, to taste

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine the milk and beaten eggs.
Gradually add wheat flour until the mixture forms a smooth, thick batter.

Cook

Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.
Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the dumplings are cooked through and 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.

Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 help the dumplings set as they cook.
Wheat flour: Provides starch and gluten that thicken the batter and give the dumplings body.
Milk: Adds moisture and softness, loosening the batter into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Cook until cooked through. Dumplings can look set on the outside while the centre is still raw dough. Cooking for the full time, until no raw dough shows, ensures the flour starch and egg proteins fully set inside.

“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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Egg Dumplings for Soup