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Chicken Dumplings

Chicken dumplings made with minced chicken, gravy, egg yolks, flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine minced chicken, gravy, and a little chicken broth in a saucepan; heat gently until boiling.

  2. Stir in flour mixed with a little cold water, then add the beaten egg yolks; stir until thickened.

  3. Pour the mixture out and let it cool and stiffen.

Shape and coat

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into flattened balls.

  2. Roll the balls in cracker crumbs, dip them in a batter of 1 egg and ½ cup milk, then coat again in cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the dumplings in hot lard until golden brown; drain and serve hot.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 chicken mixture and thicken it as it cooks, giving the filling structure.
Flour
Thickens the gravy mixture so the filling holds together when cooled and shaped.
Egg
Forms a batter that helps the cracker crumb coating stick to the dumplings.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browning outer crust when the dumplings are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool and stiffen before shaping. The cooked filling is soft while hot and will not hold a shape until it cools and firms. Shaping it too early makes the balls slump and crack during coating and frying.

“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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