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Fine Potato Dumplings

A dish of potato dumplings boiled in salted water and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fine Potato Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine grated potatoes, flour, nutmeg, salt, and melted butter.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add to the mixture.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the potato mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Using a tablespoon, scoop the mixture and drop it into boiling salted water.

  2. Boil for 1.5 minutes.

  3. Serve with melted butter.

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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. 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

Grated cooked potatoes
Form the bulk of the dumplings and give them a soft, starchy body.
Flour
Binds the potato so the dumplings hold their shape while boiling.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the dough, while whipped whites add lightness and help it puff.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the dough and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites deflated by overmixing lose the air that lightens the dumplings, leaving them dense. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the potato

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

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

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