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Onion Dumplings

Onion dumplings made with Spanish onions, minced ham, and a flour dough, boiled for 3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Onion Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the Spanish onions in half, removing the heart to create space for the filling.

  2. Fill the onion halves with the finely minced and seasoned ham.

  3. Make a dough using the flour, baking powder, and suet.

  4. Stick the onion halves together with a little egg white and cover with a layer of the pastry.

Cook

  1. Tie the dumplings in a well-floured cloth and boil for 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + hamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

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

  5. Ham + flourtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and egg 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and moist as it steams.
Millennium flour
Forms the dough's structure that wraps and holds the filling together.
Borwick's baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and lighten as it cooks.
1 egg white
Acts as a binder that sticks the onion halves together before wrapping.

The step that matters

Tie the dumplings in a well-floured cloth. A tight, well-floured cloth keeps the dough sealed and prevents it from absorbing too much water while boiling, so the dumplings hold their shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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