Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Noodle Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, mix 2 eggs with enough dry, sifted flour to form a firm, smooth paste.
Roll out the paste as thin as possible and cut it into bands 1¼ inches wide.
Cut the noodles
Dust the bands with flour and stack four of them on top of each other.
Cut the stacked bands into the finest possible strips, separate them with a knife, and spread them out to dry slightly.
Cook and serve
Drop the noodles into boiling soup and cook for 5 minutes until done.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Eggs
- Bind the flour into a firm dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew once cooked.
The step that matters
Rolling the paste as thin as possible. Thin sheets cook through quickly in the soup and keep the noodles tender rather than doughy. Dusting the bands and spreading the strips lightly dry prevents them from sticking together.
“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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