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Potato Dumplings

A dish of boiled potato dumplings made with eggs, farina, flour, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their jackets, then peel and mash them.

  2. Run the mashed potatoes through a potato ricer and let them cool.

  3. Weigh out 2 pounds of potato for this recipe.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Add the beaten eggs, farina, flour, salt, and nutmeg to the potatoes.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the balls into boiling water (add 1 teaspoon of salt per quart of water) and boil for about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the dumplings and serve hot.

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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour 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
Form the body of the dumpling, giving a soft, starchy structure once mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mashed potato so the dumplings hold their shape while cooking.
Farina
Absorbs moisture and helps the dough firm up so the dumplings keep their shape.
Flour
Adds structure to the dough, helping the dumplings hold together in the water.

The step that matters

Ricing and cooling the potatoes. Mashing potatoes too finely or working them too much can make them gluey, while letting them cool before adding eggs and flour keeps the dough from turning wet and sticky and helps the dumplings hold their shape.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, nutmeg. 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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