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Hungarian Potato Dumplings

A boiled dumpling made from mashed potatoes, eggs, and flour, fried in butter and optionally served with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hungarian Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the cold mashed potatoes, eggs, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Roll out the dough and sprinkle it generously with fried bread crumbs.

  3. Roll the dough up like a jelly roll, press it down flat, and cut it into squares.

  4. Press the edges of each square together to seal them.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into salted boiling water and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the dumplings with a skimmer and drain them in a colander.

  3. Place the dumplings in a dish and keep them warm in the oven.

  4. Fry butter until golden brown and pour it over the dumplings before serving.

  5. Optionally, sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the dumplings 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cold mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that hold the dough together and give a soft, tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the potato and flour into a cohesive dough that holds its shape while cooking.
Flour
Adds structure to the dough so it becomes stiff enough to roll and seal.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when browned and poured over the cooked dumplings.

The step that matters

Press the edges of each square together to seal them.. If the seams are not sealed well, the dumplings can open or leak starch into the boiling water and fall apart during cooking.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, flour, butter, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, flour, butter, sugar. 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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