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Buttermilk Dumplings

A soft dough dumpling made with buttermilk, flour, eggs, and baking soda, boiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix them with the buttermilk.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a few drops of boiling water and mix it with the buttermilk.

  3. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour, blending to form a smooth, soft dough.

  4. If using sweet milk, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder for each cup of flour instead of baking soda.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Drop the dough by the teaspoon into boiling water, cover, and boil steadily for 10 minutes.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Buttermilk
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to lift the dumplings and adds tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce gas that makes the dumplings rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the dumplings together while they cook.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough.

The step that matters

Drop the dough by the teaspoon into boiling water, cover, and boil steadily. The dough must sit in a steadily boiling, covered pot so the dumplings cook through and set. Too low a heat or lifting the lid lets them turn heavy and gummy.

“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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