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Potato Dumplings

A dish of potato dumplings made with grated potatoes, cooked rice, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the grated potatoes.

  2. Add salt to the cooked rice.

  3. In a skillet, brown the bread crumbs in butter.

  4. Stir in the eggs and cook until set.

Shape and boil

  1. Combine the rice, grated potatoes, and fried crumbs.

  2. Add enough flour to hold the mixture together.

  3. Form into balls.

  4. Drop into boiling water and cover.

  5. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

  6. Serve immediately.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

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

Grated potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that bind the dumplings and give a tender interior.
Cooked rice
Adds starch that helps the mixture hold together and gives a soft texture.
Eggs
Set when cooked, adding binding structure to the dumplings.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and adds starch so the balls hold their shape in water.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add a toasted, slightly nutty flavor when browned in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor and helps the bread crumbs brown.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be added only until the mixture holds together. Too much makes the dumplings dense and heavy, while too little lets them break apart in the boiling water.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, bread, butter, 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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