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Dumplings

A simple steamed dumpling made from flour, butter, baking powder, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Work in the butter with your fingertips.

  3. Gradually add the milk until the dough is formed.

  4. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch and cut with a biscuit cutter.

Steam

  1. Place dumplings in a buttered steamer over a kettle of hot water.

  2. Steam for 12 to 15 minutes.

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. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the dumplings together while steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, making the dumplings light and puffed rather than dense.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough, adding moisture and some richness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk. Adding milk slowly lets you stop once the dough just comes together. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and dense, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly.

“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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