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Oblong Potato Dumplings

A potato dumpling made with mashed potatoes, eggs, baking powder, and flour, fried and topped with scrambled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Oblong Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  2. Add water, eggs, salt, baking powder, and enough flour to create a stiff dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough into oblong shapes, about 3 inches long.

  2. Heat butter in a skillet and fry the dumplings until browned.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, scramble eggs and pour over the dumplings.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 bulk and soft, tender body of the dumpling.
Eggs
Bind the dough together and add richness to the scrambled topping.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the dumplings hold their shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the dumplings rise and turn lighter.
Butter
Browns the outside of the dumplings and adds rich flavor during frying.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the dough. Adding flour until the dough is stiff but not heavy matters, because extra flour makes the dumplings dense and tough. Potato starch is also sticky, so the dough should be firm enough to shape without sticking.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, 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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