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German Potato Dumplings

German potato dumplings made from boiled and raw potatoes, eggs, flour, and bread, boiled and served with gravy or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Grate the raw potatoes, drain off all the water, and squeeze them in a cloth.

  2. Add the grated cold potatoes and mix with the other ingredients.

  3. Form the mixture into balls the size of a goose egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the balls into boiling water and boil for half an hour or until they rise to the top.

  2. Serve with meat gravy, butter, or a sour sauce.

Make the sour sauce

  1. Make the sour sauce by frying a chopped onion in butter until brown.

  2. Add 2 cups of water and ⅓ cup vinegar to the sauce.

  3. Thicken the sauce with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed with cold water.

  4. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dumpling and, once grated and squeezed, starch that binds and gives body.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato and bread into a cohesive dough that holds its shape while boiling.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and adds structure so the dumplings hold together instead of falling apart.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dumpling texture, helping it stay tender rather than dense.
Bread
Fried cubes add pockets of crisp, toasted texture and a savory flavor inside the dumpling.

The step that matters

Squeezing the grated potatoes. Raw potato releases a lot of water and starch on standing. Excess liquid makes the dough soft and loose, so the dumplings can fall apart in the boiling water. Squeezing out the water first keeps the dough firm enough to hold its shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, bread. 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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