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Chicken Dumpling

A soup of stewed chicken and potatoes with potato‑based dumplings made from flour, milk, baking powder, salt, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Chicken Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken as for frying and stew it with the potatoes until tender.

  2. In a bowl, make a dough using 1 cup of milk, the baking powder, and salt.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Drop large spoonfuls of the dough into a pot of boiling water, which should be about half full.

  2. Cover the pot closely and boil slowly for 35 minutes without lifting the cover.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the remaining gravy in the pot with the egg yolk, 1 spoon of flour, and the remaining cup of milk.

  2. Ensure the dumplings are light and spongy.

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 + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Egg yolk
Enriches the gravy and helps it thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and gravy.
Potatoes
Add starch and body that soften in the stew and lightly thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while the dumplings boil. Lifting the lid lets steam escape and the water temperature drop, so the dumplings can turn dense and heavy instead of light and spongy. Steady steam trapped under the lid cooks them through and helps them rise.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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