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Suet Dumplings

A dumpling made from bread crumbs, suet, eggs, flour, and milk, boiled and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Suet Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, chopped suet, beaten egg whites, beaten yolks, salt, baking powder, and flour.

  2. Add enough milk to form a stiff paste.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Wring small cloths in hot water, dust with flour, and place a ball in each cloth, tying securely but leaving room for expansion.

  2. Cook in rapidly boiling water for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with a liquid sauce.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture to give the dumplings body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
Flour
Provides starch that sets with the egg and helps hold the dumpling's shape.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Leaving room for expansion in the cloths. Dumplings rise as the baking powder releases gas and the flour and eggs set. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the dumpling cannot expand and may turn dense or split, so the tie must allow for this.

“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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