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Matzoth Dumplings

Matzoth dumplings are small balls made from matzoth, onion, eggs, and matzoth meal, boiled in water or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Matzoth Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the matzoth

  1. Soak the matzoths in cold water to cover for 1 hour, then drain until perfectly dry.

Make the batter

  1. Chop the onion very fine and brown it in the chicken fat.

  2. Add the browned onion to the matzoths along with the beaten eggs.

  3. Mix in enough matzoth meal to create a stiff batter.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chopped parsley to taste.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Boil the dumplings in sauce or salted water for 10 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Matzoths
Form the bulk of the dumplings, and soaking then drying them controls how moist the batter becomes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the dumplings hold their shape.
Chicken fat
Carries the flavor of the browned onion and adds richness to the dumplings.
Matzoth meal
Stiffens the batter so it can be shaped into balls without falling apart.

The step that matters

Drain the soaked matzoths until perfectly dry. Matzoths that stay wet add excess moisture to the batter, making it too soft to hold its shape. Thorough draining lets the added matzoth meal set the batter into a stiff mix that keeps the dumplings intact while they boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, pepper, nutmeg, parsley. 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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