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Anna Kadlec

Boiled potato dumplings made with mashed potatoes, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Paidar, Marie, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anna Kadlec

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil seven large potatoes until cooked, then mash them well.

  2. Add two eggs and one-half teaspoon salt, and mix together thoroughly.

  3. Sift one pound of flour onto a board.

  4. Place the potato mixture onto the flour and work well for about ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary to make a stiff dough.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the dough into dumplings.

  2. Drop the dumplings into boiling salted water and boil for twenty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

694Calories
24 gProtein
7 gFat
133 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Paidar, Marie, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp. 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. See the original page.

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. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk and soft body of the dumplings after mashing.
Eggs
Bind the mashed potato and flour together into a cohesive dough.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and forms gluten with kneading, giving the dough structure so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Adding flour while working the dough. Potatoes vary in moisture, so adding flour only as needed keeps the dough stiff enough to shape. Too much flour makes dumplings dense and tough, while too little leaves them sticky and likely to fall apart in the water.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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