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Soup

Egg Dumplings

Egg dumplings made from a smooth, firm batter of eggs, milk, flour, and salt, dropped into boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly with a little salt.

  2. Add the milk and enough flour to make a smooth, firm batter.

Cook

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Provide structure and binding so the dumplings hold together while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the dumplings their body and firm texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the batter so it blends with the flour.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup. The batter must be firm enough to hold its shape. If it is too thin it will disperse into the soup instead of forming dumplings. Keeping the soup at a steady boil cooks the outside quickly so the dumplings set.

“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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