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Dumplings for Soups and Stews

Dumplings made from bread, eggs, flour, and optional meat or other ingredients, cooked in soup or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Abel, Mary Hinman, b. 1850 · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Dumplings for Soups and Stews

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak hard dried bread in cold water until softened; press dry and crumble.

  2. Combine crumbled bread with salt, pepper, a little chopped suet or butter (or marrow), chopped onion, herbs, and one egg per cup of mixture; mix lightly.

  3. Shape the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the balls gently in boiling soup; test one for cohesion, adding a little flour if needed.

  2. Optionally, substitute chopped cooked fish, marrow, or bacon cubes for the meat.

  3. The dumplings may also be fried in a pan, baked, or boiled in salted water for 5 minutes.

  4. Serve the dumplings in soup or use as garnish.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

784Calories
27 gProtein
26 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78

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

By Abel, Mary Hinman, b. 1850. 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Bread
Forms the body of the dumpling once soaked, pressed and crumbled.
Eggs
Bind the crumbled bread so the balls hold their shape.
Flour
Added in small amounts to help the dumplings hold together when they are too loose.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and moist.

The step that matters

Testing cohesion before cooking the batch. If the mixture is too loose, the dumplings break apart in the simmering soup. Testing one first and adding a little flour lets the binding be corrected before the whole batch goes in.

“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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