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Dumplings for Soup

Soft dumplings made from butter, eggs, flour, and herbs, dropped into soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg whites and yolk, and beat well.

  3. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  4. Season with sage, summer savory, or sweet marjoram, and nutmeg if desired.

Cook in the soup

  1. Drop teaspoons of the batter into the soup about 10 minutes before serving.

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. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lightness so the batter holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it holds together in the soup.

The step that matters

Drop teaspoons of the batter into the soup about 10 minutes before serving.. A stiff batter needs time in hot liquid to set and cook through. Dropping it in too early can leave dumplings soggy or break them apart, while adding it too late leaves them undercooked.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, sage):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, sage. 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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