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Soup Sticks

Soup sticks are dough sticks baked until golden, served with soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soup Sticks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Shape

  1. Mix flour, water, salt, and butter to form a dough.

  2. Roll the dough into long, slender shapes.

  3. Place the dough in fluted pans no wider than your middle finger.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown and crusty.

  2. Serve with soup.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins and starch set when baked.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and helps it brown.
Water
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and can be rolled.

The step that matters

Rolling to a slender shape. Thin, narrow pieces bake through and turn crisp; thicker or wider dough stays soft and doughy in the centre. Keeping each piece within the pan width matters for an even, crusty result.

“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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