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Pigs in Blanket

A dumpling dish with boiled potato filling wrapped in noodle dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pigs in Blanket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Dice the potatoes and boil them until soft.

  2. In a pan, combine bread crumbs, butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and onion slices. Fry until brown.

  3. Add the boiled potatoes to the pan and mix well.

Form and cook the dumplings

  1. Prepare noodle dough and cut it into squares.

  2. Place the potato filling in the center of each square and fold to form dumplings.

  3. Drop the dumplings into the broth used to boil the potatoes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the soft, starchy bulk that makes up the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and moisture, giving the filling body and a toasted flavor when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown in the pan.
Noodle dough
Forms the outer wrapper that encloses the filling and cooks into a tender casing.

The step that matters

Fry the crumb mixture until brown. Browning the bread crumbs in butter develops nutty, toasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Stopping too early leaves the filling pale and bland, while overcooking makes it bitter and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, bread, butter, parsley, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, butter, parsley, 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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