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Potato Dumpling

A dumpling made from mashed potatoes, flour, and milk, boiled and served with gravy or sweet sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes until smooth.

  2. Combine the mashed potatoes with dry flour, wheaten flour, and salt.

  3. Add milk gradually to form a firm paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or tie it in a floured cloth.

  2. Boil until firm and light.

  3. Serve with brown gravy, melted butter, cooked apples, stewed prunes, jam, treacle, or sweet sauce.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Dry flour
Provides the main starch structure that holds the dumpling together while it cooks.
Boiled potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, light texture to the dough.
Wheaten flour
Adds structure and body to the dough so it holds its shape when boiled.

The step that matters

Add milk gradually to form a firm paste. Adding milk slowly lets you control the dough's moisture. Too much liquid makes the dumpling heavy and sticky and it may fall apart, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

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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