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Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

Lemon dumplings made with bread crumbs, suet, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and lemon juice, boiled and served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the grated bread-crumbs, chopped suet, moist sugar, salt, and flour.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, beaten eggs, and strained lemon juice. Stir well.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the mixture into small, well-buttered cups and tie them down with a cloth dipped in flour.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Turn out onto a dish, sprinkle with sifted sugar, and serve 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 + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Bread-crumbs
Form the bulk of the dumpling and absorb the liquid so it holds together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and rich as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, moist texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth down firmly. A loose cloth lets water seep into the cups and soak the dumplings, while a dipped-in-flour cloth forms a seal that keeps the mixture dense and shaped during boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, 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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