Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

A sweet dumpling made with grated bread, suet, sugar, lemon, apple, flour, and eggs, boiled and served with fairy butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine grated bread, chopped suet, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, grated apple, flour, and beaten eggs, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Divide the mixture into square pieces and tie them in cotton cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the cloth-wrapped dumplings into boiling water with a tin plate underneath to prevent sticking, then boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with 'Fairy Butter' made from brown sugar.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Grated bread
Forms the body of the dumpling and soaks up moisture from the other ingredients.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it hold its shape.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture so the dumplings hold together.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and a mild sweetness and tartness to the dumplings.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be tied firmly so the dumpling holds its square shape and stays intact in the boiling water. A loose wrap lets the mixture spread and fall apart while it cooks.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, lemon, flour, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, lemon, flour, egg. 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

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes