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German Dumplings, or Dampfnudeln

A German steamed dumpling made from yeast dough, boiled in milk and served with fruit or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

German Dumplings, or Dampfnudeln

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the yeast with lukewarm milk, sugar, beaten eggs, and melted butter until well combined.

  2. Add the flour and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth and light, and it drops from the spoon.

  3. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for at least 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, divide it into small balls the size of an egg, and let them rise for a few more minutes.

  2. Butter the bottom of a shallow pan and sprinkle with powdered sugar, then add enough milk to cover the bottom by 1 inch and bring it to a boil.

  3. Gently place the dumplings in the pan, leaving space between each, cover, and bake in the oven until the milk evaporates and the dumplings are golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the dumplings on a hot dish with stewed fruit, sweet sauce, or custard.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light before shaping.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure once beaten into the liquid mixture.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and helps the bottom brown in the pan.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that the dumplings cook and steam in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dumplings brown.

The step that matters

Baking in the milk. The milk must be boiling before the dumplings go in, and the dumplings must be spaced apart. Crowding traps steam and prevents even browning, while the milk cooking away lets the bottoms crisp and turn golden.

“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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