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Egg Dumplings for Soup

Egg dumplings made from milk, eggs, flour, and baking soda, dropped into soup to cook.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Egg Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk and beaten eggs.

  2. Add enough wheat flour to create a smooth, thick batter without lumps.

  3. Alternatively, mix 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup sour milk, and 3 beaten eggs (whites and yolks separately).

  4. Dissolve 1 teaspoon baking soda in a spoonful of water and add to the mixture.

  5. Add enough flour to make a very stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter into boiling soup.

  2. Drop spoonfuls into the broth and boil for 20 minutes, or until no raw dough is visible.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Wheat flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the dumplings body and hold their shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to release gas, helping the dumplings lighten.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the flour into a batter.

The step that matters

Boil until no raw dough is visible. Dumplings are thick and dense, so the centre cooks slowly. Boiling for the full time sets the starches and proteins through, preventing a gummy or raw middle.

“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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