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Chicken and Dumplings

A stew of chicken with dumplings made from milk, egg, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken and Dumplings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Stew the chicken until tender, adding salt halfway through cooking.

Make the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, salt, egg, baking powder, and flour to form a dough.

  2. Drop heaping teaspoonfuls of the dough into boiling broth.

Finish cooking

  1. Cover and cook in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) or fireless cooker until done.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure so the dumplings hold their shape while cooking.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the dumplings.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the dough and adds richness and a soft crumb.

The step that matters

Drop heaping teaspoonfuls of the dough into boiling broth. Dumplings need a gentle, covered simmer to cook through; if the dough is wet or the liquid is not steadily boiling, they can turn gummy or fall apart.

“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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