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German Potato Dumplings

German potato dumplings made with grated raw and boiled potatoes, eggs, flour, and served with a brown onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

German Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Grate the raw potatoes.

  2. Drain off all the water.

  3. Squeeze the grated potatoes in a cloth.

  4. Combine the grated raw potatoes with the cold boiled potatoes and other ingredients.

  5. Form the mixture into balls the size of a goose egg.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Boil the dumplings in water for half an hour or until they rise to the top.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until brown.

  2. Add water and vinegar to the fried onion.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with cold water.

  4. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that bind the dough and give the dumplings body.
Eggs
Bind the dough so the dumplings hold their shape during boiling.
Flour
Adds structure to the dough and thickens the sauce.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dumpling dough so it rises.
Bread
Adds fried, diced pieces that add texture and absorb moisture in the dough.
Onion
Browned in fat to give the sauce sweetness and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Squeeze the grated potatoes in a cloth. Raw grated potato holds a lot of liquid. Removing it keeps the dough firm enough to shape and stops the dumplings from turning heavy or falling apart in the water.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, flour, bread, vinegar, pepper. 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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