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Dessert

Lemon Dumplings

A sweet dumpling made with bread crumbs, beef suet, powdered sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and egg yolks, boiled or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Lemon Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, suet, sugar, and lemon rinds together in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice and beaten egg yolks to bind the mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into dumpling shapes.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in a cloth or steam until cooked through; steaming is preferred.

  2. Serve with a sweet lemon-flavored cream 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. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to the dumplings.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the dumpling shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the dumplings tender as they cook.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Boil in a cloth or steam until cooked through. Dumplings made with egg and suet need enough heat and time to set fully. Steaming cooks them gently and evenly, while boiling in a cloth can leave them waterlogged or unevenly cooked if the heat is too high.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, sugar, 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.

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