I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly curious about the origin of things. I like to understand how something evolves to become what we know today. That’s why I’m so passionate about the etymology of words, since it explains how a word that we use and know today came to be.
Now, in this case I’m going to explain to you how dumplings evolved and why we called them that. First, it’s important to understand that still now, there is no real information about who created the dumplings; however, food historians have gathered great theories with all the available evidence they have found.
Scholars suspect that dumplings were first spread in the ancient world by Nomadic Turkic people that were living in Western China and Central Asia. They believe that, since the word “manti” means a steamed bun in Turkic language, and so it appears to be the root word for “dumpling” in other languages.
Historians also suspect that Turkic people stuffed their dumplings with meat, but they are unsure about whether they learned the art of dumpling making from other cultures.
Now, the first writings that talked about dumplings appeared over 1700 years ago in a poem in ancient China by Shu Xi. He talks about several things: first, about a strange cooking method that came “from alien lands”, which appears to refer to the different ways people started cooking dumplings in that time. Then, he described a steamed wheat product called “mantou” and finally, he talked about the preparation of these dough balls which appeared to be packed with pork, lamb and aromatics and dipped in a meat sauce, he called this “Lao wan”.
It’s important to know that dumplings diversified over the next thousands of years in China, and with that a lot of regions decided not to go with the traditional meat filling and they decided to go vegetarian. They also created new cooking methods and new products emerged. Since wheat was hard to cultivate, people started making their dumplings with rice, sweet potato and tapioca.
Alright, but how is all of this information related to why dumplings are called as they are? Food historians have different theories as to how the dumplings spread across the globe. One of those is that the Mongol Empire introduced the dumplings to Eastern Europe and they believe this helped with the creation of the Russian pelmeni, the pierogi and vareniki which are eaten in Poland and Ukraine. These types of dumplings are stuffed with potato, cabbage, cheese and cherries.
Historians also say that since the Mongol Empire controlled Korea, they also introduced them there, where dumplings were eaten with regional ingredients like kimchi. Then, when Japan occupied China during the Second World War, the Chinese “jiaozi” was brought to Japan, where they were later called “gyozas” and they were traditionally pan-fried.
Later, as the dumplings continued spreading, during the 16th century in England, they started calling them “dumplings” which meant to describe the dough balls that were dropped in liquid. Nonetheless, the Knödel and the Matzo balls are not filled with anything, which makes the name dumpling completely incorrect, but the name stuck and nowadays that’s how we call it.
Now you know, depending on the place and the fillings it has, a dumpling should be called differently.