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Potato Dumplings

A dumpling made from mashed potatoes, butter, salt, sugar, mace or nutmeg, eggs, and flour, dropped into boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mash the potatoes while warm.

  2. Add the butter, salt, sugar, and a pinch of mace or nutmeg.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then mix with the potato mixture.

  4. Add enough flour to make a stiff batter.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Drop ½ teaspoon of the batter at a time into boiling soup and cook for 5 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy base that gives the dumplings their body and soft interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure so the dumplings hold together while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a stiff batter that holds its shape in the boiling soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Enough flour must be added to make a stiff batter. Too little leaves the dumplings loose and likely to fall apart in the boiling soup, while the starch in the flour helps them set as they cook.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, sugar, egg, flour. 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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