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Dessert

Light Currant Dumplings

Light currant dumplings are boiled dumplings made with flour, suet, currants, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Currant Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, suet, currants, and salt.

  2. Add milk or water gradually until a thick batter forms.

Cook and serve

  1. Divide the mixture into portions and tie each in a well-floured cloth.

  2. Boil the dumplings for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sweet 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Flour
Forms the body of the batter and gives the dumplings their structure as they cook.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and moist during boiling.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the dumplings.

The step that matters

Tying the dumplings in cloth. The cloth must be well floured so the dumplings do not stick to it. The cloth also needs to be tied firmly enough to hold the batter together while it boils, so the dumplings keep their shape.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. 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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