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Dessert

A Very Nice Dumpling

A dumpling made with eggs, milk, flour, sea salt, and wild blueberries, boiled and served hot with butter and molasses or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

A Very Nice Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until thick.

  2. Gradually add the flour and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the whortleberries.

Bag and boil

  1. Rinse and flour a pudding bag inside.

  2. Pour in the batter, tying the bag but leaving a space for swelling.

  3. Boil for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with butter and molasses or sugar.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the batter and help bind it into a set dumpling.
Flour
Flour forms the dense starchy structure that sets as the dumpling cooks.
Milk
Milk supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the dumpling moist.
Whortleberries
Berries add fruity flavour and juice that moistens the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tying the bag with room to swell. Flour starch swells and the batter expands as it cooks, so leaving space keeps the bag from bursting while the bag must still be sealed so boiling water cannot enter.

“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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