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Irish Potato Dumpling

A boiled dumpling made from mashed potatoes, flour, baking powder, lard, butter, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Irish Potato Dumpling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Pass the mashed potatoes through a sieve to remove lumps.

  2. Mix in the lard and butter, then add the salt.

  3. Sift the baking powder into ½ cup of flour and combine with the potato mixture.

  4. Add milk gradually to form a stiff dough, incorporating more flour as needed.

Boil and serve

  1. Roll the dough with any kind of fruit, then place it in a floured cloth and tie it securely.

  2. Boil in a pot of water for two hours, ensuring the pot remains filled with boiling water.

  3. Serve with a hot or cold sauce.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body that gives the dumpling its soft, tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the dough and help it rise.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and keeps it from becoming tough.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching the dough's taste and mouthfeel.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so it holds together stiffly during boiling.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot filled with boiling water. Water that drops below a rolling boil cools the dumpling, slowing cooking and making the dough heavy and uneven. Topping up with boiling water keeps heat steady for the full two hours.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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