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Potato Dumplings

Potato dumplings are boiled balls made from grated potatoes, eggs, salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine grated potatoes, beaten eggs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture can be formed into round balls without being too stiff.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Carefully drop the dumplings into the boiling water.

  3. Cook for about 20 minutes until they float to the surface.

  4. Serve with sauerbraten or browned butter.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that give the dumplings their body.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the dumplings hold their shape.
Flour
Adds enough structure to form the mixture into balls that hold together in water.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Too much flour makes the dumplings stiff and dense, while too little leaves them likely to fall apart in the boiling water. Add it gradually and stop once the mixture can be shaped into balls without being too stiff.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, flour. 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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