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Dumplings for Boiled Dinner

A simple flour-based dumpling boiled in meat broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Dumplings for Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and sugar, then sift the mixture into another bowl.

  2. Add a scant cup of sweet milk and stir until a smooth dough forms.

  3. Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and roll the dough to ½ inch thick.

  4. Cut the dough into shapes the size of a napkin ring.

Cook

  1. Cook the dumplings in meat broth for exactly 10 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the dumplings together while cooking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the dumplings rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to lighten the dough.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the dough moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Cook the dumplings in meat broth for exactly 10 minutes. Cooking time controls how fully the starch in the flour sets and how light the dumplings stay. Boiling too long can make them dense or gummy, while too short leaves the centres raw and doughy.

“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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