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Dumpling for Any Kind of Pot-pie

Soft dough dumplings made from flour, baking powder, butter, and sweet milk, steamed for 30 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dumpling for Any Kind of Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add sweet milk gradually to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll the dough to about 1 inch thick and cut into squares.

Steam

  1. Place the squares in a steamer over the pot.

  2. Cover tightly with a cloth and then place the lid on the steamer.

  3. Steam for 30 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and turn light and fluffy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and makes it rich.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Cover tightly with a cloth and then place the lid on the steamer.. A tight seal keeps steam trapped around the dumplings so they cook through evenly. Letting steam escape lowers the temperature and can leave the dumplings dense or 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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