What is a dumpling?

My friend Dorothea of Holme hosted a dumpling session at War of the Trillium earlier this month, where we tried to define dumplings. To me, dumpling is most commonly the kind of food described when you look up the work “manti” in Wikipedia: a spiced meat mixture wrapped in a thin sheet of wheat dough which is then boiled or steamed. This type of dumpling is popular in most cuisines of Central Asia, Afghanistan, West Asia, South Caucasus, Turkey, the Balkans, Muslim parts of China, and the former Soviet countries (notably Ukraine and Georgia). The size and shape of dumplings (mantu/manti/pierogis/peteha/kinkhali vary significantly depending on geographic location.

Similar dumplings are found further east, known as jiaozi and baozi in China (and what we know as wontons or potstickers in Canada), mandu in Korea, buuz in Mongolia and momo in Tibet. This is where definitions of dumplings get confusing. There are also steamed bread-like buns called mantou in China, mandu in Korea, and manjū in Japan.

The earliest recipe I know of for manti was written by Muhammed bin Mahmud Shirvani in his 15th C manuscript adding to the earlier Arabic cookbook by al-Baghdadi. His is a steamed dumpling with a minced lamb and crushed chickpeas filling that is flavoured with cinnamon and vinegar and garnished with sumac. The manti would be served garlic-yoghurt sauce.

We also have Welserin’s recipe 193, which is what Dorothea made for us to try. Here is the recipe, taken from David Friedman’s site.

Going west, we have ravioli and tortelli in Italy (numerous recipes in various medieval and Renaissance cookbooks), but also ravieles in Form of Curye, rabels in the Innsbruck Manuscript and boiled krapfen in Sabrina Welserin’s cookbook. The rabel and krapfen recipes are very similar. The kreplach (dumplings served in a broth) of Ashkenaki Jewish cooking may have appeared at round the same time.

193 How to make chicken dumplings 

Take the meat from two chickens. After it is cooked chop it finely, mix grated Parmesan cheese in with it and color it yellow and stir it together. You should also put mace and pepper into it. After that prepare a dough. Make a thin flat cake and put the above described filling on it and form it into a dumpling and join the two ends together. Cook it in broth as long as for hard- boiled eggs and serve it warm.

Mention of kreplach leads me to another category of dumpling, the version we associated most with that word in North America. These are the bread dumplings, Knödel or matzo type, balls of dough that are boiled in a broth, or top a stew. Volker offers several dumpling recipes of this type, and the blog Give it Forth also offers a meat dumpling as one for guissell and related recipes, plus one for juschelle of fish.

So what is not a dumpling? We considered empanadas, spring rolls and calzones, all foods with a dough exterior and a filling. We decided that they didn’t count if they were deep fried or baked as the primary cooking method. What about the dumpling-like toppings on apple pan dowdy or blueberry grunt? They are steamed/baked over a fruit base rather than with water or broth so probably not. Tamales? They are definitely steamed but they use a completely different starch (cornmeal) and retain their shape while cooking thanks to the banana leaf wrapper. We classified it as a “maybe”. These were our own arbitrary categories. There is no hard and fast definition, and others do count empanadas and spring rolls as dumplings.

All in all, it was a lively hour of discussion, punctuated with yummy treats.

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Stuffed Eggs for Monks and Religious

To prepare different eggs for the religious. Take eggs and hard-boil them. She’ll and cut them in half, pounding the yolks with parsley, marjoram other good herbs, and spices, then stuff the white with this mixture. After that, take butter or oil and hot water. Place the eggs into the liquids, then mix raw eggs with verjuice, wine, parsley, and saffron and pour the mixture above the stuffed eggs, boiling all the ingredients; for monks and the religious.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs, hard boiled
• 1 1/2 tsp dried parsley. Triple this amount if using fresh
• 1/2 tsp dried marjoram. Triple this amount if using fresh
• Other herbs such as savoury, rosemary, thyme or oregano can also be added to taste
• 1/4-1/2 tsp each salt, and pepper (to taste)
• 1/4 tsp saffron, crushed
• 1 Tbsp oil or butter
• 1 Tbsp water
• 1 raw egg
• 2 Tbsp each verjuice and white wine

Peel the eggs, slice them in half and remove the yolks. Mash the yolks with 1/2 tsp of the parsley, plus marjoram, some of the salt and pepper and any other herbs you wish. Return the yolk mixture to the eggs, without overfilling. The recipe does not indicate this, but using the yolk mixture to “glue” two halves of the egg together is an option.

Separately, mix together the raw egg, the remaining parsley, saffron, verjus and wine. I used a little more salt in this mixture as well.

Put the oil or butter and water into a small pot or pan, then add the stuffed eggs and heat quickly. Next, add the raw egg mixture and stir it gently, without moving the eggs too much. You should end up with something similar to soft scrambled eggs.

Serve the scrambled mix topped with stuffed eggs immediately as they are best when hot.

source: Johannes Bockenheim “Registrum Coquine”, Introduction, Translation and Glossary by Marco Gavio de Rubeis, 2021. The original is 1st half of 15th C, probably after 1417.

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Salted Purslane

Weeding the purslane from my garden and turning it into a medieval dish is becoming an annual tradition. I have written about it here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This year I decided I wanted to preserve some for future use. The blog Give it Forth: Adventures in Medieval Cookery has a nice collection of 16th-17th C recipes for preserving purslane, including the answer to a question from a previous year: purslane is indeed a cooling herb and was used to lower fevers and soothe inflames stomachs. I didn’t feel like doing a sweet or vinegary version, so in the end I followed the instructions in The Cooks’s Guide from 1664.

To pickle Pursla•e to keep all the year. TAke the biggest stalks picked clean, the• strew bay-salt first into your pot, and then th• stalks of Purslane, and then salt again, so do ti•l your pot be full, then tye it up close and keep it cool.

I simply stripped off the leaves and thin stalks, chopped the larger stalks into bit-sized pieces, and layered them with coarse salt. Once again, I wished for the huge stalks of purslane grown for food instead of the little weeds in my garden. This was a tedious job and resulted in enough for about half a pint of purslane and salt mixture.

I expect the end result will be very similar to the salted herbs that were a tradition in the province of Quebec and may date back to the same period. According to someone in my local gardening group, every Québécoise housewife in the Lower St. Lawrence once had her own recipe. The basic recipe is to any herbs you have (parsley; celery is nice; a bit of carrot is a must; as are chives or green onions; I also used a bit of savoury and rosemary when I made mine). Add 1/4 to 1/3 parts coarse salt. Mix well and allow to macerate in the fridge for a few days. Then stuff into sterilized jar(s). It’ll keep a long time in fridge. Mine have been sitting happily in the fridge since December.

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