Skip to main content
Main

Dumplings for Soup

Dumplings made from butter, salt, nutmeg, egg, and toasted bread crumbs, boiled in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, nutmeg, and the egg; beat well.

  3. Stir in the toasted bread crumbs.

  4. Let the mixture stand for a short time.

  5. Mould the mixture into balls the size of hickory nuts.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into boiling soup.

  2. Boil for fifteen 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the dumplings hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and rich.
Toasted bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the dumplings body and structure.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the dumplings.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into boiling soup.. Dumplings need to go into a fully boiling liquid so the outside sets quickly. If the soup is not boiling, they can break apart or turn heavy and doughy while they cook.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread. 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.

More dumplings for soup recipes

Egg 4 See all 3 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes