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Currant Dumplings

Currant dumplings are boiled dumplings made with flour, currants, beef suet, salt, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Currant Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix flour, currants, suet, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add water gradually to form a dough.

  3. Divide the dough into 8 to 10 pieces and shape into dumplings.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil water in a pot and add the dumplings.

  2. Boil rapidly for 45 minutes, stirring from the bottom constantly.

  3. Drain and let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Currant + beeftop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure so the dumplings hold together while boiling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
Currants
Provide pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the dumplings.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a hint of molasses flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly for 45 minutes, stirring from the bottom constantly. Dumplings boiled in water can stick to the pot or sink and cook unevenly if the water is not kept at a rolling boil and stirred. Constant stirring from the bottom keeps them moving and prevents sticking and scorching.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, sugar. 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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