Dump and Dumplinger

Saucyman – Why Dump(ling) all over chicken? I thought home cooking was supposed to be good. – Doughboy

Despite being represented by chewy half-cooked versions offered up on cold days, dumplings have a rather virtuous lineage. The dumplings of the dim sum cart are believed to be progenitor - the alpha-dumpling: Gnocchi, tortellini, matzo balls and kreplach are all descendants and depending on how loose you want to get with the word both the noodle-like spaetzle and kluski could be classified as dumplings.

Maria Polushkin, author of Dumpling Cookbook, divides dumplings into 2 categories - dropped and filled. Filled dumplings, be they ravioli, wonton or pieorgi have been served in broth or fried in fat for time and eternity or something pretty close to that timeline. The objectionable chicken & dumplings comes from dropped branch of the dumpling family. Strictly utility, this dumpling is believed to have evolved from the practice of dropping bread dough in simmering stock or soup.†

Cookbooks use the words ‘feathery’, ‘light’ and ‘airy’ to describe drop dumplings, I don’t know if this is wishful thinking but I would be more likely to use ‘sodden’, ‘glutinous’ and ‘leaden’ before any delicate adjective. ‘Huge’ would also be a good descriptor of the dumplings I have known and this might be part of the problem.

An Inconvenient Ingredient

We might think of yeast or baking soda as leaving agents but these ingredients work by creating carbon dioxide, which in turn does all the lightening. In the new millennium, the baking powder is the tool of choice. Each manufacturer uses a different formula, so depending on the exact composition of chemicals; baking powder needs to reach a temperature between 100 – 140ºƒ (38-60 C) to fully activate. Since rapidly boiling liquid will break apart dough, the dumpling needs to be simmered - for a big drop dumpling, 5 minutes in 180ºƒ stock isn’t going to get the leavening done and if kept in the liquid too long waiting to heat up, the dumpling becomes saturated, loosing any desirable texture along the way. Perhaps there is a bit of mastery to a good dumpling.

Marilynne Robinson addresses the dumpling paradox in her novel Home. Here are the thoughts of Glory Boughton as she reflects on dinner she has prepared and is readying to eat:

She, also, had eaten some terrible dumplings. It occurred to her to wonder if they were ever good in the ordinary sense, if at best they were not just familiar, inoffensive. They were too inoffensive. It might have been the word “dumpling” she liked rather than the thing itself.

†Dumpling, the noun, was created in about 1600 when the English suffix, ing was married to its linguistic cousin, the Low German (Geography, not hierarchy) word dump - meaning damp, moist, heavy. Usage in Colonial America began with dumperlin’ and the word as we know it now, appeared in print for the first time in the 17th century to describe a ball of steamed dough.