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Cheese Dumpling

Cheese dumplings made with cottage cheese, eggs, butter, porridge, boiled, then topped with browned breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cheese Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cheese mixture

  1. Crush the cottage cheese through a sieve and mix with the egg yolks, 1 ounce of butter, and salt using a wooden spoon.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold into the cheese mixture.

  3. Add enough porridge to hold the mixture's form.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat water in a saucepan, add salt, and bring to a boil.

  2. Form round balls from the cheese mixture, drop them into the boiling water, and cover the pan.

  3. After 10 minutes, remove the dumplings with a spoon and let the water drip off.

  4. Melt 3 ounces of butter and mix in enough sifted bread crumbs to avoid lumps.

  5. Roast the bread crumbs until golden brown and pour over the dumplings 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Cottage cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the body of the dumplings and gives them their rich, dense texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the mixture, while whipped whites add lightness and help it set when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dumpling mixture and to the golden bread-crumb topping.
Porridge
Adds body and binding so the dumplings hold their shape in the water.
Bread crumbs
Toasted in butter, they add a golden, crisp, nutty topping.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives lightness. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving the dumplings dense and heavy after they cook.

“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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