Skip to main content
Main

Dumplings for Children

Soft dumplings made from a stiff milk batter with eggs, served in boiling soup or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dumplings for Children

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk and salt to a boil.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. For best results, cook in a double boiler.

Finish and cook

  1. Let the mixture cool slightly, then stir in the egg yolks.

  2. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Drop spoonfuls into boiling soup or broth.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Its starch and proteins thicken with the hot milk to form the stiff batter that holds the dumplings together.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter with fat and emulsifiers, adding richness and helping bind the dumplings.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, which lightens the dumplings and keeps them from becoming dense.
Butter
Adds fat that contributes richness and a tender, moist texture.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the yolks. Hot batter can scramble egg yolks into lumps. Letting it cool slightly lets the yolks blend in smoothly and keeps the batter uniform.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes