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Dessert

Sweet Dumplings

Sweet dumplings made from flour, sugar, spices, and fruit syrup, boiled in milk and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, orange peel, lemon peel, and cloves.

  2. Add enough butter, cream, and fruit syrup to form a paste.

  3. Shape the mixture into small balls, about the size of a nectarine.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pot, bring milk and water to a boil.

  2. Gently add the dumplings to the boiling liquid.

  3. Cook for about 1 hour until done.

  4. Serve with wine 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 main structure of the dumpling paste as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the dumplings a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat, enriching the paste and adding richness to the texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the paste hold together.

The step that matters

Gently add the dumplings to the boiling liquid. Dumplings are delicate and can break apart if dropped in or stirred hard. Adding them gently to the simmering liquid lets them set their shape as the starch cooks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, cinnamon, orange, clove, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cinnamon, orange, clove, butter, cream. 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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