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Soup Dumplings

Soup dumplings made from egg yolks, potato, parsley, cayenne pepper, and sea salt, cooked in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Soup Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare any ordinary stock.

  2. In a bowl, mash the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs with ¼ cup of hot boiled potato. Add 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste. Mix in 1 raw egg yolk.

Form and cook

  1. Form the mixture into balls the size of cherries, flouring your hands as needed.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling stock and cook for 5 minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Provide a rich, crumbly body that gives the dumpling its filling texture.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mashed mixture so the balls hold their shape in the stock.
Boiled potato
Adds starch and moisture that keep the filling soft and cohesive.

The step that matters

Forming the balls. The mixture is soft and sticky, so flouring your hands helps prevent it from tearing or sticking. Balls that are too loose may break apart when dropped into boiling stock, so they should be shaped firmly and evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, pepper. 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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