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Dessert

Currant Dumpling

A dumpling made with flour and dried currants, boiled in a light batter, served with lemon juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Currant Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a light suet crust (see crust recipe).

  2. Mix dried currants with flour.

  3. Add milk to create a light batter.

Boil

  1. Boil in one large dumpling tied in a floured cloth or in six smaller dumplings without cloths.

  2. If using smaller dumplings, drop them into boiling water and ensure they do not stick to the pan.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours with a cloth or 30 minutes without.

  4. Dumplings will rise to the top when done.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon juice and sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and milk 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the bulk of the dumpling and sets into a firm structure when boiled.
Dried currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture, with fruit flavour throughout the dumpling.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a light batter that cooks into a moist dumpling.

The step that matters

Boil in a floured cloth or small dumplings without sticking. Flour on the cloth keeps the dough from sticking and lets the surface form a skin, while the dumpling must stay in rolling boiling water so it cooks through evenly and rises. Dough that sticks to the pan or cloth can tear or cook unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. 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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