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German Potato Dumplings

German potato dumplings are boiled potato balls made with raw and boiled potatoes, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, and fried bread.

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 cold boiled potatoes, also grated, 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. Fry a chopped onion in butter until brown, then add 2 cups of water to make a sour sauce.

  3. Serve the dumplings with meat gravy, butter, or the sour 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. 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

Raw potatoes
Provide starch and bulk that give the dumplings their body and chew.
Cold boiled potatoes
Add moisture and a softer texture to the grated raw potato mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the dumplings hold together while cooking.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the dough structure so it keeps its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dumplings and helps them rise.
Bread
Adds fried, diced pieces that give texture and a toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Squeeze the raw potatoes dry. Raw grated potato holds a lot of water. If it is not drained and squeezed well, the excess liquid makes the dough loose, so the dumplings can fall apart in the boiling water.

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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