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Dessert

Dumplings

Sweet dumplings made with flour, suet, currants, and a pinch of salt, boiled and served with sweet wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, suet, currants, and salt.

  2. Add enough milk or water to create a thick batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the batter in well-floured cloths to form dumplings.

  2. Boil the dumplings in water for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with a sweet wine sauce if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the dumpling together while it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings tender and rich as it melts during cooking.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity flavour throughout the dumplings.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so it forms a thick batter that can be shaped.

The step that matters

Flouring the cloths before tying. A well-floured cloth forms a dry barrier so the wet batter does not stick to it. Sticking can tear the dumpling apart when it is lifted out of the water.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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