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Dumplings for Beef Stew

Dumplings made from flour, salt, baking powder, butter, and milk, steamed over beef 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 Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together.

  2. Rub the butter in with your fingertips.

  3. Gradually add the milk, mixing with a knife.

Steam on the stew

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture close together on top of the stew.

  2. Cover the kettle with a clean towel, place the lid on, and steam for fifteen minutes.

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 main structure of the dumplings as it sets with heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that rubs into the flour and keeps the dumplings tender.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough together.

The step that matters

Add the milk gradually and mix only until combined. Mixing the dough too much develops gluten in the flour, which makes dumplings tough and dense instead of soft. Stop once the dough just comes together.

“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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