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Lemon Dumplings with Lemon Sauce

Lemon dumplings served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lemon Dumplings with Lemon Sauce

six dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the suet, bread crumbs, 3 oz sugar, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice, and enough milk to moisten the mixture.

  2. Divide the mixture into six equal parts.

  3. Dip six small pudding cloths in boiling water. Dust the cloths with flour.

  4. Tie a dumpling in each cloth.

  5. Drop the dumplings into a pot of boiling water. Boil for one hour, keeping the pot covered.

  6. Remove the dumplings from the cloths. Arrange them on a dish. Dust with powdered sugar.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix 1 oz butter and 1 oz sugar in a saucepan over heat until bubbling.

  2. Stir in ½ pint boiling water, 1 oz sugar, and the lemon zest and juice. Do not let it boil after adding the lemon.

  3. Serve the sauce in a sauceboat with 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Suet
Melts during boiling, keeping the dumplings moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the dumplings body and a light texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the dumplings hold their shape.
Lemon
Provides aroma and sharp acidity that balances the sugar.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the lemon. Strong heat can dull the fresh lemon aroma and flavor and may cause the sauce to separate or turn bitter, so it should be kept warm rather than boiled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, milk, 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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