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Noodle Soup

A simple noodle soup made with stiff dough noodles boiled in beef stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Noodle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the eggs with enough flour to create a very stiff dough.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of baking powder to the flour before mixing.

  3. Roll the dough thin and let it dry for 1 hour.

  4. Cut the dried dough into very fine strips.

Cook and season

  1. Boil the strips in 2 quarts of beef stock for 20 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 structure and richness to the noodles.
Flour
Forms the main body of the dough, giving the noodles their structure once dried and cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dough slightly, giving the noodles a more tender bite.
Beef stock
Cooks the noodles while flavouring them, so the broth and noodles become one dish.

The step that matters

Rolling and drying the dough. The dough must be rolled thin and dried fully before cutting. Thick or damp dough stays gummy in the broth and cooks unevenly, so the noodles lose their texture.

“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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