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Fruit Dumplings

Fruit dumplings are small sweet dough pieces boiled in fruit juice.

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 ↓

Fruit Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the egg and re-cream.

  3. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together.

  4. Add the sifted mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk.

  5. Place the dough on a floured board and roll to a thickness of ½ inch.

  6. Cut into small diamond or round shapes.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into boiling sweet fruit juice.

  2. Cover and simmer for about 12 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Place dumplings on individual plates.

  5. Serve with the fruit juice.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that holds the dumplings together.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the dough as it is creamed with the sugar.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the dough so it comes together and stays soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it cream with the butter.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into boiling sweet fruit juice. The juice must be at a full boil when the dough goes in so the outside sets quickly. This helps the dumplings hold their shape and cook through evenly while they simmer.

“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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