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Egg Dumplings for Soup

Egg dumplings made by dropping a thick batter of milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder into boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Egg Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 pint of milk and 2 well-beaten eggs.

  2. Add enough wheat flour to create a smooth, thick batter without lumps.

  3. Stir in 1½ teaspoons of baking powder.

Cook

  1. Drop the batter by the tablespoon into boiling soup.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 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
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the dumplings as they cook.
Wheat flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold the dumplings together.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts in the batter, helping the dumplings puff and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Drop the batter by the tablespoon into boiling soup. The soup must be at a steady boil so the dumplings set quickly on contact. If the batter is too thin or the soup is not boiling, the dumplings can dissolve or turn heavy and dense.

“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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