Why it works: Flour and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,077 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Chop the suet finely and mix it with the flour.
Add the washed, picked, and dried currants.
Mix everything to a limp paste with the water.
Shape and boil
Divide the mixture into 7 or 8 dumplings and tie them in cloths.
Boil for 1½ hours.
If boiled without cloths, drop them into boiling water and stir to prevent sticking.
Serve
Serve with a cut lemon, cold butter, and sifted sugar.
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.
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Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,077 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dumpling dough that holds the currants together.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
- Currants
- Provide the fruit flavour and sweetness throughout the dumplings.
The step that matters
Stirring when boiled without cloths. Dumplings dropped into boiling water can stick together or to the pot as they first set. Stirring gently keeps them separate and evenly shaped while the outer layer firms.
“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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