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Dessert

Dumplings for Stew

A simple dumpling made from flour, butter, baking powder, milk, and salt, steamed in stew.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dumplings for Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Work in the butter with your fingertips or cut it in with two knives.

  3. Gradually add the milk, using more if necessary to make a soft dough.

Cook

  1. Round bits of dough on a teaspoon and place them on top of the stew.

  2. Quickly adjust the cover and steam for about twelve minutes.

  3. Do not open the cover until the time is up, or the dumplings will not be light.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as it binds with the liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts with moisture and heat, so the dumplings rise and become light.
Butter
Coats flour particles when worked in, giving the dumplings a tender, short texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the dumplings.

The step that matters

Do not open the cover until the time is up. Opening the lid releases the steam that is lifting the dumplings. The sudden drop in heat and humidity can cause them to collapse and turn heavy.

“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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