Skip to main content
Main

Bread Dumplings

Bread dumplings made from soaked bread, broth, butter, eggs, nutmeg, parsley, and flour, boiled in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Soak the bread in the broth, then squeeze it dry and beat it with a fork.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, add the bread, and mix well.

  3. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. When cool, stir in the beaten eggs, nutmeg, and parsley.

  5. Mix well and shape into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll the balls lightly in flour.

  2. Boil them in broth for 2 minutes and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Provides the body of the dumplings, soaking up broth to form a soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the dumplings hold their shape while cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the bread before it is combined with the eggs.
Broth
Moistens the bread and gives the dumplings savoury flavour as they cook.

The step that matters

Shaping and boiling the dumplings. The mixture must be cool before the eggs go in, or they may scramble, and the balls should be rolled lightly in flour so they hold their shape. Boil them briefly so they stay tender rather than breaking apart.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, egg, parsley, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, egg, parsley, flour. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes