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Egg Dumplings for Soup

Egg dumplings made by dropping batter into soup and boiling until cooked.

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

Make the first batter

  1. In a bowl, combine ½ pint of milk with 2 well-beaten eggs.

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

  3. Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.

Make the second batter and cook

  1. For the second method, mix 1 cup of sour cream and 1 cup of sour milk.

  2. Add 3 well-beaten eggs (whites and yolks separated), 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon water.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a very stiff batter.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of this batter into the broth and boil for 20 minutes, or until no raw dough is visible on the outside.

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 + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 set the dumplings so they hold their shape while cooking.
Wheat flour
Provides the starch and structure that thickens the batter into dumplings.
Sour cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the dumplings a tender, moist crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the dumplings rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that leavens the dumplings.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes until no raw dough shows. Dumplings must cook through in the simmering liquid; the dense batter stays raw inside if removed early, and the starch sets only as it heats fully.

“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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