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Onion Dumplings

Onion dumplings made with biscuit dough, eggs, onions, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onions in a pan until nearly done but not brown.

  2. Pour in the beaten eggs and stir until cooked.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Roll out the biscuit dough as thin as for pies and cut into squares.

  2. Place one or more spoonfuls of the onion mixture on each square.

  3. Fold over the squares and press the edges tightly.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into boiling water, cover, and boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the dumplings and drain them.

  3. Brown some breadcrumbs in butter.

  4. Place the dumplings on a hot dish and pour the butter and breadcrumbs over them.

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. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + biscuittop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the onion mixture and set into a soft, cohesive filling when stirred and cooked.
Biscuit dough
Forms the thin wrapper that encloses the filling and cooks through in boiling water.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the browned breadcrumbs poured over the dumplings.
Breadcrumbs
Toast in butter to add a crisp, golden, contrasting texture on top.
Onions
Provide sweetness and savoury aroma when softened in the pan without browning.

The step that matters

Press the dumpling edges tightly. Sealed edges keep the filling inside during boiling; a loose seam lets the filling leak into the water and leaves the dumpling soggy or hollow.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, biscuit, butter. 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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