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Dessert

Yule Dumplings

A sweet bread dumpling made with raisins, almonds, lemon peel, mace, sugar, butter, eggs, and flour, boiled and served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Yule Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Cut the bread into slices and pour enough cold milk over it to soften.

  2. Gently press the bread to absorb the milk.

  3. Add the small and large raisins, almonds, lemon peel, mace, sugar, butter, and eggs. Mix well and add flour to form a consistent dough.

Cook and serve

  1. Use a spoon to divide the dough into dumplings.

  2. Plunge the dumplings into boiling water and cook until done.

  3. Remove with a skimming spoon and serve with cream 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the body of the dumplings, soaked in milk so it binds the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and help hold the dumplings together while they cook.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it forms a dough that holds its shape.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness, becoming plump as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be stirred in only until the dough is consistent. Too much flour makes the dumplings dense and tough, while too little leaves them too soft to hold together in the boiling water.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, raisin, almond, lemon, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, raisin, almond, lemon, sugar, butter. 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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