Name: Bread Dumpling
Ingredients: 13 ounces fine semel bread (about 1 loaf); 4 ounces fine flour; 3 cups water

Why it works: Bread and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Dumpling

Ingredients

13 ounces fine semel bread (about 1 loaf)
4 ounces fine flour
3 cups water

Directions

Prepare the dough

Cut the semel bread into fine pieces.
In a bowl, combine the bread pieces and flour.
Gradually add water to form a dough.
Shape the dough into dumplings.

Cook and serve

Boil the dumplings in clear water for 30 minutes.
Remove from water and serve.

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.

Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,383 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Semel bread: Forms the main body of the dumplings and absorbs water to hold their shape.
Flour: Binds the bread pieces together so the dough holds its shape while boiling.

“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.