Skip to main content
Main

Currant and Suet Dumplings

A boiled dumpling made with currants, suet, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Currant and Suet Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the suet and currants, then stir to combine.

  3. Gradually add milk until a soft dough forms.

  4. Shape the dough into small balls.

Cook

  1. Boil in a pot of water for about 20 minutes until cooked through.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and milk 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dumplings together as they cook.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and rich rather than dry.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts with moisture and heat, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Supplies the moisture that hydrates the flour and forms a soft, workable dough.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit flavor throughout the dumplings.

The step that matters

Cook until cooked through. Dumplings cook by the heat of the boiling water, and the flour starch must fully set for the centre to become light and tender. Underdone centres stay dense, gummy and doughy, so the full cooking time matters.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes