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Tomatoes Witil Dumplings

A tomato soup with dumplings made from flour, baking powder, butter, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomatoes Witil Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, combine the can of tomatoes, salt, cayenne pepper, bay leaf, and chopped onion.

  2. Boil slowly for 1 to 2 hours.

Add dumplings and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, melted butter, egg, and milk to make the dumpling batter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dumpling batter into the boiling tomatoes.

  3. Cover and cook for 10 minutes without removing the lid.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as it sets around the egg and milk.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps the dumplings hold their shape while cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dumpling batter.
Tomatoes
Provide the acidity, body and main flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Cover and cook without removing the lid. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, which cools the surface of the soup and can leave dumplings dense or gummy. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the dumplings cook through and rise.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, flour, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, flour, butter, egg, milk. 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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