Skip to main content
Main

Potato Dumplings

Potato dumplings made with boiled potatoes, eggs, flour, salt, and browned bread pieces, boiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes a day before and let them cool.

  2. Grate or grind the cooled potatoes.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated potatoes with beaten eggs, flour, and salt for about 15 minutes.

  2. Form dumplings the size of small apples, placing 5 pieces of browned bread in the center of each.

  3. Boil the dumplings in continuously boiling water for 25 minutes without covering the kettle.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that holds the dumplings together and gives them a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato mixture so the dumplings hold their shape while boiling.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and adds structure, helping the dough hold together.
Stale bread
Browned in butter, it adds a toasty flavour and a contrasting crisp-soft texture at the centre.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a continuous boil. Dumplings made from raw starch can turn heavy or fall apart if the water drops below a steady boil. A rolling boil cooks the starch through and sets the outside, so the dumplings stay intact.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, bread, butter. 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.

More potato dumplings recipes

German 8Boiled 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes