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Savoury Suet Dumplings

Savory suet dumplings made with flour, suet, egg, herbs, and boiled in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Savoury Suet Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, suet, baking powder, sweet herbs, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and mix it with 1 tablespoon of milk and the meat extract.

  3. Moisten the dry ingredients with the egg mixture to form a fairly stiff paste.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Boil the dumplings in stock or water for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with gravy from roast meat.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the dumplings together as they cook.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and moist as they cook.
Egg
Binds the dry ingredients into a cohesive paste and helps hold the shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.
Meat extract
Adds a concentrated savoury flavour to the dough.

The step that matters

Moisten to a fairly stiff paste. Too much liquid makes the dough slack, so the dumplings can break up or turn soggy in the boiling stock. Too little leaves them dry and crumbly. A firm, workable paste holds its shape and cooks through evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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