Name: Prune Drop Dumplings
Ingredients: 1 pound French prunes; 2 quarts water; 1½ cups all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt; water as needed for batter; sugar to taste

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prune Drop Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil prunes in 2 quarts of water until soft.
In a bowl, mix flour, butter, baking powder, and salt. Add enough water to make a batter that drops easily from a spoon.

Cook and serve

Drop the batter into the boiling prunes.
Boil until dumplings are cooked through.
Sweeten to taste 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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour: Forms the dumpling batter that holds its shape while cooking.
Baking powder: Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Butter: Adds fat that softens the dumplings and gives them a richer texture.
French prunes: Soften in the boiling water to make a fruity, sweet cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into the boiling prunes. The batter must be thick enough to drop from a spoon and the liquid must be at a full boil. A thin batter spreads and loses its shape, and a cooler liquid lets dumplings turn heavy and gummy rather than cooking through light and fluffy.

“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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Prune Drop Dumplings