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Buttermilk Dumplings

A dumpling made from buttermilk, flour, eggs, and baking soda, boiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs together and mix them with the buttermilk.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a few drops of boiling water and mix it with the buttermilk.

  3. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour, blending to a smooth, soft dough.

  4. If using sweet milk, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder for each cup of flour instead of baking soda.

  5. Sift the baking powder with the flour if using sweet milk.

Cook the dumplings

  1. Drop the dough by the teaspoonful into boiling water, cover, and boil steadily for 10 minutes.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Buttermilk
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lighten the dumplings.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce gas that helps the dumplings rise.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure to the dumplings.
Flour
Forms the body of the dough and gives the dumplings their structure.

The step that matters

Keep the dough soft and blend it smoothly. Blending the buttermilk mixture into the flour until smooth and soft, without overworking, keeps the dumplings tender. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes them tough and dense.

“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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