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Dumplings

Small dough balls made from flour, butter, water, salt, egg, and baking powder, dropped into boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix melted butter, water, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Break in the egg and beat well.

  4. Mix in the baking powder with a bit of flour.

Cook in the soup

  1. Drop spoonfuls into boiling soup.

  2. Cover and cook for 20 minutes without lifting the lid.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 starch and gluten network that gives the dumplings their body.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the dumplings puff and rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat that softens the batter and gives a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cover and do not lift the lid. Trapped steam cooks the dumplings through and helps them puff. Lifting the lid releases steam and drops the temperature, which can make the dumplings collapse.

“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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