Etymology, Historical Documents and Cookbooks
Dumplings may not rival Marie Antoinette’s brioche as a globally renowned foodstuff but they are certainly well represented in historical records and cookbooks worldwide. This is not surprising, considering that it is a ubiquitous food, steeped in tradition. The evolution of the dumpling can be traced by comparing recipes from the yellowed pages of books of a bygone era with those from the glossy, colourful publications that fill the cookery sections of bookshops and the kitchen shelves of the middle classes. Many of the recipes collected in books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide a record of how dumplings have been prepared and eaten for hundreds of years. Even now, the most traditional recipes are still used in modern kitchens and factories and are strictly adhered to, especially when celebratory meals are concerned. Many new varieties, resulting from experimentation in kitchens and restaurants, are influenced by the desire to fuse and combine different world cuisines and unusual ingredients to make everyday meals more interesting and appealing.
Wontons, Chinese dumplings made of very thin wrappers and often served in a broth. The etymology of the word could refer to their irregular shape.
Despite copious references, the etymology of some of the words used to describe dumplings in different languages is not always clear. Through written or oral tradition several interpretations emerge, most of which link the origin of the different words either to their shape or to their filling. As is clear from the glossary at the end of this book, there are many names for dumplings, reflecting the fact that they can be compacted or folded into many different shapes and filled with various combinations of ingredients.
The English word ‘dumpling’, for example, has been traced back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, when the now obsolete noun ‘dump’, which probably meant ‘lump’, was given a diminutive suffix. The more recent cepelinai, on the other hand, which became popular in Ukraine in the mid-twentieth century, derived its name from the German airship designed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, because of its oblong shape and large size.
In Mandarin some dumplings are called huntun, which roughly means ‘irregularly shaped’, and are the equivalent of the Cantonese ‘wonton’, which means ‘swallowing clouds’ and could refer to the steam rising from the hot filling when the dumpling is bitten into or even to the irregular shape and white or translucent colour of some dumplings.
The etymology of jiaozi also has slightly different explanations, both of which relate to its shape. According to some, it was invented by Zhang Zhongjing (AD 150–220), a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and author of Shang Han Za Bing Lun (Treatise on Cold Pathogenic and Miscellaneous Diseases). Zhang was committed to helping Chinese people from all social classes fight disease, and developed a special soup made with mutton, peppers and medicinal ingredients to placate not just hunger but also cold and even frostbite afflicting the ears. The soup contained ear-shaped dumplings, the name of which, jiaozi, comes from the same root as the word for ear. A different interpretation has it that jiaozi derives its name from its horn shape, as the Chinese for horn is jiao, which signified the shape of gold ingots and was a symbol of wealth.
I encountered very similar difficulties when researching the origins of the Italian word ‘ravioli’. According to different but equally reputable sources, the name derived from the verb ravvolgere (to wrap), the noun rovogliolo (knot) or the medieval Latin word rabiola (small turnip), all referring to the round shape of the pasta wrapped around the filling. The last suggestion is the one preferred by Giacomo Devoto, Italian linguist and president – between 1963 and 1972 – of the Accademia della Crusca, the institute for the protection and study of the Italian language. Other sources suggest that the name derives from raviggiolo, a cheese previously used in place of ricotta as a filling. In this case the name of the filling would eventually have come to describe any dumpling, regardless of its stuffing. This interpretation was favoured by Piero Camporesi, a professor at the University of Bologna between 1969 and 1996, and an expert in the social history of food and nutrition.
Another typically Italian linguistic controversy relates to the difference between Ligurian ravioli and Piedmontese agnolotti. The different names could refer to different fillings rather than to shapes, since green vegetables and cheese were staples of the Ligurian diet while meat and eggs were very prominent in the robust Piedmontese cooking. This interpretation is supported by the definitions of ravioli and agnolotti in the first dictionary of the Italian language, published in 1612 by the Accademia della Crusca. However, the origin of the name agnolotti could be either agnello (lamb), after the first meat filling used in Piedmont, or anello (ring), after the dumplings’ original shape as a circle.
The shape of Italian tortellini is thought to be inspired by Lucrezia Borgia’s navel.
Whatever the origins of the words used in different languages, dumplings are named and sometimes pictured in those sources – which include commercial contracts, chronicles and letters – that historians use to increase their understanding of the society and traditions of the past.
Historical Records of Medieval Italian Dumplings
Medieval Italian dumplings, particularly, pop up in a number of historical documents that help to inform the debate about the origins and evolution of this prominent food through the everyday life of the so-called Dark Ages.
A visit to the chapel of Castel d’Appiano, near Bolzano in northern Italy, reveals a thirteenth-century fresco depicting the locally famous mangiatrice di canederli (dumpling eater), which provides the earliest available record of this typical south Tyrolean dish. The series of frescoes decorating the walls of the chapel represents the life of Christ and the Apostles in unmistakable Romanesque style, with a lack of perspective amply compensated for by vibrant colours and the familiarity of the depicted scenes. The Nativity scene consists of a typically two-dimensional representation of Mary and Joseph having a well-deserved rest while the Christ Child is asleep in the manger. Joseph sits at Mary’s feet, resting his head on the palm of one hand and looking dreamy and contented. Mary lies on her side with her back to the crib and the stylized donkey and bull, turning her attention to a servant, the dumpling eater, who is cooking for the family. The servant, dressed in a green robe and yellow hair covering, is squatting by a pan that is placed on a lively fire and is full to the brim with round, appetising dumplings. The servant is pictured in the act of tasting one of the dumplings by bringing it to her mouth using a large fork. The type of dumpling represented in the fresco is canederli, a large ball of dough made of stale bread and milk with the addition of bacon, beetroot, fresh cheese, spinach, mushrooms or even fruit, ricotta cheese and sugar, boiled in broth or water. Canederli is also popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where it is called Knödel or Klösse. The visit to the chapel can be combined with a stop at the nearby tavern, which – in common with all the restaurants in the region – includes dumplings among the local specialities on its menu.
Thirteenth-century fresco in the chapel of Castel d’Appiano representing a servant making canederli in a large pan.
Ravioli is well-documented throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the town of Gavi in Piedmont claims the honour of being its birthplace. (Gavi is not the only Italian town to make this claim.) Members of the Raviolo family were said to have invented this dumpling and popularized it by selling it to merchants and travellers at their locanda (public house) in Gavi, on the way to the busy commercial port of Genoa. The only ‘proof’ for such a claim is the family’s coat of arms, with its crude picture of a dumpling topped by three stars.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, 1567, oil on panel, from Boccaccio’s Decameron. Cockaigne was a mythical land of plenty.
That the raviolus was eaten in Parma before the end of the thirteenth century is recorded by Fra Salimbene di Adam (1221–c. 1290), also known as Fra Salimbene of Parma, in his Cronica, an important source of information on the history and traditions of the time. The Italian friar and historian wrote that he had eaten ‘raviolos sine crusta de pasta’ (ravioli without a pasta wrapping) during the celebrations of Santa Chiara, which have commemorated the saint every year on 11 August since her death in 1253. He also wrote that as ravioli in Parma were smaller than those in Genoa and other Italian towns, they were called raviolén (small ravioli). That probably later became anolén, and might explain the origin of the word anolini, which is used exclusively to describe filled dumplings from Parma and its surrounding region.
The topic of size is encapsulated in a comic poem in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (S.Q.O.VIII, 38):
A very gallant son was granted to the raviolo because of its good fortune, and that son is the anolino, a keen follower and lover of chicken broth. As for its appearance, it resembles its own father, it is cut in the same way but it has less body [referring to the thinner wrapper] and better brain [the meat filling]. But as it remained small, it ended up been called anolino [small dumpling].
Even Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), a prominent figure in the history of Italian literature and considered to be one of the founders of Renaissance humanism, could not help mentioning ravioli in his most famous work, the Decameron, a medieval collection of 100 allegorical stories, narrated over ten days and ten nights by seven young women and three young men taking refuge from the Black Death epidemic in a villa outside Naples. Boccaccio mentions ravioli in one of the best-known of his tales (Decameron VIII, 3), in which Calandrino, a simple man who is the object of many practical jokes, is convinced by his friends of the existence of a magical stone, the heliotropia, that has the power of making the person who carries it invisible. Calandrino is persuaded by his friends that such a stone can be found in the paese del Bengodi (land of plenty, known in English as Cockaigne), a land where food is in abundance, the vineyards are tied to their supports with strings of sausages rather than rope, and there is a mountain of grated cheese on which ‘there were people who did nothing other than prepare maccheroni and ravioli and cook them in a capon broth’. Of course, the mountain is also blessed by the presence of a river of the best wine, without the hint of a drop of water in it.
Etching after Louis Philippe Boitard (active 1738–63) representing a dumpling seller crying ‘diddle diddle diddle dumplens oh’, from a late series of the Cries of London. |
Such an abundance and variety of references confirm that ravioli and other filled dumplings have been a staple of the Italian diet for many centuries, served, as is the case today, as a first-course alternative to the more internationally acclaimed spaghetti, lasagne and maccheroni.
With the invention of the printing press and the improvement of education, literacy rates increased across Europe and later the USA from just a few per cent of the population in the Middle Ages to an average of more than 50 per cent in the nineteenth century. Books became more affordable, and recipe books started to become a must-have resource for the middle-class woman, who was often in charge of household management and budgeting. By the nineteenth century cookbooks had begun to move away from elaborate and expensive recipes to include ideas of how to feed families every day of the week, often suggesting monthly plans and providing tips on how to make staple and standard food more interesting and cost-effective. Dumplings, a popular, simple and inexpensive food, fitted well into this new approach.
British and North American cookbooks published between 1840 and 1970 include many recipes for the dumpling, which was described both in 1918 and 1940 as one of the ‘foods that will win the war’. Dumplings were an affordable staple of cosy family meals, perhaps not exciting or exotic but certainly tasty, filling and comforting. For many, dumplings still carry memories of heavy lids lifted off even heavier cast-iron casserole dishes to reveal steaming cuts of meat covered in thick gravy and surrounded by floating dumplings; the contrast between the textures of tough, grisly meat and fluffy dumplings evoking memories of childhood and the experience of growing up.
In his book The Oxford Companion to Food (1999), the food historian and author Alan Davidson wrote:
A dumpling is a food with few, indeed no, social pretensions, and of such simplicity that it may plausibly be supposed to have evolved independently in the peasant cuisines of various parts of Europe and probably in other parts of the world too. Such cuisines feature soups and stews, in which vegetables may be enhanced by a little meat. Dumplings, added to the soup or stew, are still, as they were centuries ago, a simple and economical way of extending such dishes.
Satirical print c. 1839 of a ballad seller looking longingly at some dumplings in a shop window.
Satirical print of 1810 by Thomas Rowlandson, representing a footman and cook making puff pastry for apple dumplings.
The Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum in London has a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints that represent dumplings in scenes of everyday life. Diddle diddle diddle dumplens ho, for example, from the series ‘The Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life’ (1750–1821), shows a dumpling seller standing with a barrel under her left arm and a stick in her right hand, wearing a cape, apron and hat, her mouth open as she cries to attract the attention of passers-by. A lithograph from 1839 pictures a ballad seller looking longingly at dumplings stacked high on a plate visible in a shop window, and saying: ‘The rose shall cease to blow . . . the world shall cease to move . . . the sea shall cease to flow . . . Oh should’ent I like some of them dumplings.’
Hand-coloured portrait of the Duke of Norfolk caricatured as ‘a Norfolk dumpling’ by James Gillray, 1791.
The British Museum’s twelve-volume Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires (1870–1954) contains a hand-coloured etching from 1810 by Thomas Rowlandson entitled Puff Paste, depicting two ugly figures, a hideous footman and a fat cook, caressing each other behind a table on which apple dumpling is being prepared, alongside codling tart and batter pudding tied in a bag. The catalogue also contains a series of satirical prints from 1791 by James Gillray, ‘A Natural Crop alias a Norfolk Dumpling’, depicting a rather plump duke of Norfolk wearing top-boots and a slouchy hat with closely cropped hair, holding the baton of the Earl Marshal.
The county of Norfolk was so closely associated with dumplings that ‘Norfolk dumpling’ became a term of mockery, as Gillray’s prints demonstrate. The Norfolk dumpling, also known as a floater or floating dumpling, is the equivalent of the Yorkshire pudding. It is served with meat and was originally intended to disguise a small portion by providing a cheap and filling accompaniment. When resorts on the Norfolk coast became a popular destination for holidaymakers, dumplings were often on the menu of guest houses, as they provided filling meals at a relatively low cost. A Norfolk dumpling is light and fluffy; it floats to the surface of the broth or stew in which it is cooked, and contains no suet. A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (1852) by Charles Elmé Francatelli, chief cook to Queen Victoria, contains many recipes for dumplings, including recipe no. 52, Norfolk dumplings, described as ‘most excellent things to eke out an insufficient supply of baked meat for the dinner of a large family of children’.
As Francatelli’s aim in writing this book was ‘to show you how you may prepare and cook your daily food, so as to obtain from it the greatest amount of nourishment at the least possible expense’, it is not surprising to find at least six recipes for dumplings, among them suet dumplings boiled with beef, rice dumplings, apple dumplings and yeast dumplings, which require the following ingredients: ‘Two pounds of flour, a halfpenny worth of yeast, a pinch of salt, one pint of milk or water’. After being boiled for half an hour in a pot, not too fast, ‘they must be eaten immediately, with a little butter or dripping, and salt or sugar.’
Dumplings were and still are popular in Suffolk, where no yeast or other raising agent is used in the mixture; in the Cotswolds, where suet, cheese and breadcrumbs are added; and in Scotland, where the traditional clootie dumpling is a steamed pudding with sultanas and other fruit served with custard.
In her Book of Household Management (1861), the Victorian writer Isabella Beeton includes advice on childcare, etiquette, entertaining and the employment of servants. Eight of her recipes are dedicated to savoury and sweet dumplings, including Sussex or hard dumplings, yeast dumplings and marrow dumplings, to be served in a soup, with meat or meat gravy; and boiled apple dumplings, currant dumplings and lemon dumplings, to be ‘made into round balls’ and dropped in boiling water or to be tied in cloth ‘knitted in plain knitting, with very coarse cotton’, boiled in water and then served as desserts with sifted sugar, cold butter or wine sauce. The recipes, which start with a list of ingredients (a feature that subsequently became the usual format for recipe books), are relatively easy to follow, and some have stood the test of time.
The popularity of dumplings in Victorian Britain, in particular Suffolk, is captured in Sheila Hardy’s book Arsenic in the Dumplings: A Casebook of Historic Poisonings in Suffolk (2010), which describes how a chilling number of murders by arsenic poisoning were carried out by women using homemade food, including dumplings. Arsenic was widely and cheaply available from chemists until 1851, when the Sale of Arsenic Regulation Act introduced mandatory records of who purchased the poison, and also required colour to be added so that white arsenic powder could not be mistaken for or disguised as sugar or flour. The life-insurance business developed in the 1840s, and there were terrible cases of desperate parents poisoning their children in an attempt to support their families by supplementing their meagre income through insurance claims.
Floating dumplings are light and fluffy; they float to the surface of the broth or stew in which they are cooked and contain no suet.
The English cook and television presenter Delia Smith has published many dumpling recipes throughout her long career, which began with her first cookery book in 1971. Still very popular throughout the 1970s, dumplings became less fashionable during the following three decades because of the increased availability and popularity of new varieties of rice, pasta and bread. However, contemporary British chefs seem to have rediscovered simple and hearty food, and have revisited traditional dumpling recipes and created interesting combinations for everybody to try in the kitchen. Jamie Oliver, for example, in his unmistakable style, named a recipe Tender-as-you-like Rabbit Stew with the Best Dumplings Ever, and included Asian Chicken with Coconut Dumplings in his fifteen-minute cookbook. Heston Blumenthal’s Szechuan Broth with Duck Dumplings is hot and very tasty, as is Gary Rhodes’s Curried Crab and Dumplings. Marco Pierre White suggests using brioche to make dumplings to serve with his Daube de Venison, while Rachel Khoo’s ingredient for dumplings is baguette to accompany Boeuf Bourguignon. Gordon Ramsay and James Martin have produced the more traditional Chicken Casserole with Coriander Dumplings and Stew with Dumplings respectively. Nigella Lawson provides a recipe for Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls, and even explains how to extract schmaltz, or chicken fat, ‘by plucking out the gobbets of chicken fat that cluster inside the cavity’.
Two well-known American dumpling recipes are chicken ’n’ dumplings and boiled apple dumplings, the latter of which are nowadays considerably less popular than baked apple dumplings (not covered in this book). In the case of chicken ’n’ dumplings, the size and texture of the flour-based dumplings can vary from small to large, and from firm to fluffy, depending on whether yeast has been used. The dumplings are cooked in boiling chicken broth with pieces of chicken and vegetables. The result is a thick, glutinous, comforting soup that is ideal for winter evenings.
In the Hand-book of Practical Cookery, for Ladies and Professional Cooks: Containing the Whole Science and Art of Preparing Human Food (1868), Pierre Blot, self-styled professor of gastronomy and founder of the New York Culinary Academy of Design, provides two recipes for boiled apple dumplings, one of which instructs the cook to
Quarter, peel and core the apples, and cut them in pieces, then envelope them in puff-paste [pastry] with beef-suet, boil till thoroughly done, and serve warm with sugar, or with apple or wine sauce. It may also be served with sauce for puddings.
The book also includes a recipe for plain fruit dumplings and explains how to make herb dumplings: ‘Take a handful of the mildest herbs you can get, gather them so equal that the taste of one be not above the other, wash and chop them very small, put as many of them in as will make a deep green.’
Another classic American publication, The White House Cook Book (1887) by Mrs F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann, steward of the White House, offers thirteen recipes for dumplings: egg dumplings for soup, suet dumplings for soup, dropped dumplings in lamb stew and in pork pot-pie, puff paste of suet ‘excellent for fruit puddings and dumplings that are boiled’, boiled apple dumplings, boiled rice dumplings with custard, two different recipes for suet dumplings, preserve dumplings, Oxford dumplings ‘the size of an egg’ and ‘served with wine sauce’, and lemon dumplings. In Foods that Will Win the War and How to Cook Them (1918), C. Houston Goudiss, food expert, and Alberta M. Goudiss, director of the School of Modern Cookery in New York, recommend dumplings as part of a filling family dinner menu, served with chicken fricassée, baked squash, peas, cranberry jelly, barley muffins and mock mince pie. They write: ‘It would be well also to introduce dishes that extend the meat flavour, such as stews combined with dumplings, hominy [boiled corn kernels], or rice.’
Italian libraries are full to the brim with cookbooks, and two things are immediately clear from the very first glance at catalogues and indexes: dumpling recipes are not in short supply; and, as with many other Italian specialities, strong regional identities are captured in the many different names, shapes and ingredients.
To appreciate the degree of such regional differentiation, I feel the need to list some of the names I have come across in addition to the more common ravioli and tortellini: agnolotti (Piedmont), cappelletti (Modena), pansotti (Liguria), caramelle (Piacenza, in the shape of wrapped sweets), anolini (Parma), agnoli (Lombardy), casoncelli (Brescia), marubini (Cremona), pegai (Parma), tordelli (Lucca), cappellacci (Ferrara), ravaiuoli (Irpinia), panzerotti (Naples), calzoncelli (Puglia), culingiones or cullurzones (Sardinia), cialzons (Carnia) and also fazzoletti, tortelli, tortelloni, fagotti and fagottini. This impressive national list of dumplings can be matched only by the number of varieties present in different regions of China.
From the above list, the agnolotto, in both its meat and vegetable versions, features in the regional cookbook La Cuciniera Piemontese (The Cook from Piedmont) by an anonymous writer, published in Vercelli in 1771, and also in many recipes by Giovanni Vialardi, chef and patissier to the House of Savoy royal family in Italy between 1824 and 1853.
Freshly made Italian dumplings displayed in the window of a pasta shop.
I will provide just a sample of the cookbooks that deal with dumplings. Alberto Consiglio wrote in La Storia dei maccheroni (1948) that ‘Raviuoli were squares of thin dough that were filled with meat, salami or fresh cheese and, later on, sweet fillings.’ In 1952 Ferruccio Botti, under the pseudonym Mastro Presciutto (Master Ham), collated many recipes typical of Parma in the Gastronomia Parmense. These included recipe no. 1, Anolini, which ‘require a rather long preparation’; no. 3, Anolini ‘light’ with a filling of veal or chicken instead of beef, for ‘people following special diets’; no. 4, Pasticcio di anolini, a pie with a filling of dumplings; no. 5.1, Tortelli alle erbette, with a filling of leafy vegetables; no. 5.2, Tortelli alla Parmigiana, with tomato sauce; no. 20, Tortelli di zucca, with a pumpkin filling; no. 21, Tortelli di patate, with potato filling; no. 59, Tortelli dolci, sweet dumplings; no. 114, Tortellini di piccione, filled with pigeon. All the recipes above are still in use, and it is customary to ask for a selection of fillings, for example a trio of meat, vegetables and cheese, when eating out in Italy.
No reference to Italian food would be complete without a look at what Pellegrino Artusi had to say in his La Scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, 1891). The book, which is still widely available, was first published at the author’s expense, but by the beginning of the twentieth century had become a best-seller found in all Italian kitchens. It is a collection of 790 recipes, including broths and soups, starters (entrées), main courses and desserts, and claims to be ‘a practical manual that only requires the ability of holding a ladle’. All recipes are accompanied by anecdotes and personal remarks, and, for the first time in the history of Italian cookbooks, Artusi collated many regional expressions into a national gastronomical tradition. Recipe no. 97 concerns ‘naked’ ravioli, also known in parts of the north of Italy as malfatti (badly shaped). These are made from a dough of ricotta cheese, spinach, egg, Parmesan cheese and nutmeg, shaped into small cylindrical dumplings, rolled in flour and cooked in boiling water. Tortelli also appear as recipe no. 55, and a note to an edition of 1970 reminds the reader that ‘in the past the raviuolo could be with or without the pasta dough.’
African staples like yam and cassava are turned into dumplings and served with peanut soup.
There is even a recipe for ravioli by the famous Italian violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini dated 1840, the year he died. The recipe includes a flour-based dough without egg; a filling of beef, calf’s brain, sausage, greens, egg and cheese; and a beef, mushroom and tomato sauce. Paganini had written about ravioli in a letter to his friend Luigi Germi in 1838: ‘Every day, whether fasting or not, my mouth waters just at the thought of the delicious ravioli I have so often enjoyed at your table.’
It is very likely, then, that any Italian cookbook will include a few recipes for dumplings. However, that might not be the case in the future, as it is becoming less common to prepare dumplings from scratch in the home; most are now bought ready-made from specialist pasta shops and supermarkets.
Many contemporary African recipe books give an interesting modern take on traditional recipes from sub-Saharan Africa. Suggestions are offered as to different ingredients that allow shortcuts in preparation, to make it possible to reduce the hours, if not days, required to make certain foods, including dumplings, from scratch. I found recipes for many types of dumpling, reflecting the fact that, whether it is called fufu, ugali, nzema, kenkey or anything else, this is a staple of the African diet.
Dorinda Hafner covers a number of different types in her book A Taste of Africa: With Over 100 Traditional African Recipes Adapted for the Modern Cook (1993), and describes how dumplings should be served:
Groundnut (Peanut) Soup with Fowl is usually served with Fufu, an Akan dumpling made from yams, cocoyams (taro), plantains, cassava or even processed potato flakes. The Fufu should sit like an island in a sea of soup, with the meat and fish scattered over the top.
The somewhat stodgy nature of African dumplings is also the subject of a popular Zimbabwean saying about the national dish, sadza: ‘For sadza to enter [the body] it must be always supported by the sauce.’
Although questions remain about the etymology of the various names for dumplings around the world, the liveliness of the debate and the abundance of historical documents and essays about this food show just how important dumplings have been over the centuries in many different regional cuisines. Recipe books worldwide provide instructions and inspiration for preparing dumplings, which come very high on, and sometimes top of, the list of national dishes in a number of countries.
