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Dumplings for Soups and Stews

Dumplings made from soaked bread, meat, suet or butter, onion, herbs, eggs, salt, and pepper, cooked in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dumplings for Soups and Stews

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Soak the hard dried bread in cold water until softened.

  2. Press the soaked bread dry in a cloth and crumble it.

  3. Mix the crumbled bread with the chopped meat, suet or butter, onion, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add 2 eggs to the mixture and mix lightly.

  5. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook in the soup

  1. Cook the dumplings in gently boiling soup, testing one first to ensure it holds together.

  2. If the dumpling does not hold together, add a little flour.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the dumplings hold their shape.
Hard dried bread
Soaked and crumbled, it gives the dumplings body and soaks up fat and moisture.
Suet or butter
Adds fat, which gives the dumplings a rich, tender texture.
Cooked meat
Supplies the main savoury filling of the dumplings.

The step that matters

Testing one dumpling in the soup. If the mixture is too loose, the dumplings break apart in the simmering soup. Testing one first shows whether it holds together before the whole batch is cooked, and a little flour can be added if needed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, butter, egg, pepper. 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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