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Potato Dumpling

A boiled potato dumpling made with eggs, allspice, flour, and bread, served with browned grated bread in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes the day before using.

  2. Grate the boiled potatoes and mix with beaten eggs, allspice, salt, and flour.

  3. If the mixture is not stiff enough, add more flour.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into dumplings or balls.

  2. Boil the dumplings in hot salted water.

Serve

  1. Serve topped with browned grated bread in butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Potato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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 starchy bulk that gives the dumplings their body.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato so the dumplings hold their shape.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture so the dumplings do not fall apart in water.
Bread
Browns in butter to add crunch and a toasted flavour on top.

The step that matters

Adding flour to stiffen the mixture. If the mixture is too soft, the dumplings can break apart while boiling. Starch from the flour absorbs moisture and helps the dough hold together, so check stiffness before shaping.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, flour, bread, 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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