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Meat Dumplings

A savory dumpling made with minced meat, vegetables, and spices, steamed or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Meat Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all bone, gristle, and skin from the meat or fish and mince or shred it.

  2. Mix the meat with minced onion, green chili, celery, and season with pepper, salt, and Worcestershire sauce if desired.

  3. Chop cold meat.

  4. Mix the chopped meat with minced bacon and onion.

  5. Add half as much boiled haricot beans, rubbed through a sieve, and enough stock to moisten.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, parsley, thyme, marjoram, and a little nutmeg.

Make the dumplings

  1. For thin dough, wrap a tablespoon of the mixture in a piece of dough.

  2. Steam the wrapped dumplings for about 1 hour.

  3. For spongy dough, leaven the flour with yeast or baking powder.

  4. Roll the dough out to ¼ inch thick.

  5. Steam the dumplings until they expand to double thickness.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a dish.

  2. Cover thickly with breadcrumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough wrapper that encloses the filling when steamed.
Yeast or baking powder
Leavens the dough so it rises and becomes spongy when steamed.
Meat or fish
Provides the main filling, giving savoury flavour and body.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping during baking.
Boiled haricot beans (in the method)
Add body and moisture to the filling, thickening it when rubbed through a sieve.

The step that matters

Leavening the spongy dough. Yeast or baking powder must be evenly mixed into the flour so the dough rises consistently; too little leavening gives a dense dumpling, while steaming without room to expand traps the gas and results in uneven texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, pepper, sauce, flour, parsley, thyme):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, pepper, sauce, flour, parsley, thyme. 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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