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Oxford Dumplings

A savory dumpling made with bread crumbs, currants, beef suet, sugar, allspice, lemon rind, eggs, milk, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,083 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oxford Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, currants, beef suet, sugar, allspice, and lemon rind.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir in the milk, then mix into the dry ingredients until well combined.

  3. Divide the mixture into 5 portions and shape into dumplings.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan and fry the dumplings until they are light brown.

  2. Serve with wine 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. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure to the dumplings.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the dumplings a soft, body-filled texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and rich as they cook.
Currants
Provide sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the dumplings.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, sugar, allspice, lemon, egg, milk. 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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