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Suet Dumplings, Sweet

A sweet dumpling made with flour, suet, sugar, nutmeg, and optional currants or treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Dumplings, Sweet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix salt, sugar, nutmeg, and any chosen flavoring with the flour.

  2. Add the suet and mix thoroughly to form a dough.

  3. Divide the dough into balls.

Cook

  1. Boil the dumplings in water for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 main structure of the dough that holds each dumpling together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and moist as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Boil the dumplings in water for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.. Dumplings cooked too briefly stay doughy in the centre, while the fat and starch need steady simmering to set through. Size changes how long the heat takes to reach the middle, so larger balls need the longer time.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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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