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Plum and Potato Dumplings

A dumpling made from mashed potatoes, egg yolks, butter, sour cream, flour, and sweet plums, then boiled and coated in bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plum and Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Cook the potatoes until soft.

  2. Clean and crush them through a sieve.

  3. Add the egg yolks, butter, and sour cream and mix well.

  4. Knead the mixture with a little salt and flour.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Roll the mixture flat to about ½ inch thickness.

  2. Cut into small squares.

  3. Place a plum in the center of each square.

  4. Roll into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the dumplings in boiling water.

  2. Roll them in buttered bread crumbs.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Potato + plumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Potatoes
Form the starchy body of the dough that holds the dumplings together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the dough tender and flavorful.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and a slight tang that keeps the dough soft.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the dough enough structure to roll and shape.

The step that matters

Kneading in the flour. Adding too much flour or overworking the dough makes dumplings dense and tough, because starch and gluten build up. Knead only until the dough comes together.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, cream, flour, bread):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, egg, cream, flour, bread. 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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