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Meat Dumplings with Beans

Beef and pork dumplings served with green beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Meat Dumplings with Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumpling dough

  1. Chop the beef and pork together.

  2. Beat the butter, egg, and cooked onion with salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

  3. Mix the beaten mixture with the meat.

  4. Form small oblong rolls of dough.

Cook the beans

  1. Cut the green beans into small diagonal pieces.

  2. Heat butter in a kettle.

  3. Add beans with salt and summer savory. Cook for a few minutes while stirring.

  4. Add stock and vinegar to taste.

  5. Sprinkle flour over the beans.

  6. After boiling for a few minutes, push beans to the center of the kettle.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolls around the beans.

  2. Cover and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Place the kettle in a Caloric with a hot stone underneath for 2 hours.

  4. Serve dumplings arranged around the beans on a platter.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef and pork
Provide the main meaty body and fat that give the dumplings their texture and juiciness.
Egg
Binds the meat and crumbs together so the rolls hold their shape while cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and soften the dumpling mixture, keeping it tender rather than dense.
Green beans
Form the vegetable base of the dish, cooking gently in the stock until tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid around the beans into a light sauce.

The step that matters

Placing the dumpling rolls around the beans and boiling gently. Boiling vigorously can break the soft dumpling dough apart and make it tough or crumbly. Gentle simmering lets the dumplings set through while the flour-thickened liquid stays smooth.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, butter, egg, onion, pepper, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, butter, egg, onion, pepper, bread. 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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