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Brood Khutjes or Bread Dumplings

Bread dumplings made from soaked white bread, broth, butter, eggs, parsley, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brood Khutjes or Bread Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bread base

  1. Soak the bread in the broth, squeeze it dry, and beat out the lumps with a fork.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan, add the soaked bread, mix well over the heat, and season to taste.

Shape and cook

  1. Once cool, stir in the eggs, parsley, and nutmeg, mixing well.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls and roll lightly in flour.

  3. Boil the dumplings in stock or broth for 2 minutes and serve immediately.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Provides the main body of the dumpling, absorbing liquid and holding its shape once bound.
Broth
Moistens the bread so it softens and can be mixed into a workable dough.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor while coating the bread as it is heated.

The step that matters

Squeeze the bread dry. Bread soaks up liquid and becomes soft. Excess moisture makes the mixture slack, so the dumplings can break apart or turn heavy when boiled. Removing the extra broth keeps the balls firm enough to hold together.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, 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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