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 ↓
Noodles for Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Mix 2 eggs with enough sifted flour to absorb them, adding a pinch of salt.
Roll the mixture out thin like a wafer, dusting with a little flour.
Cut and dry the noodles
Roll the dough into a long roll and cut thin slices from the edge.
Shake out the slices into long strips and let them dry.
Cook
Add the dried noodles to soup and boil lightly for 10 minutes.
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 cohesive dough and add richness and firmness to the noodles.
- Sifted flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and lets it hold its shape when rolled.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough thin. Thin sheets dry evenly and cook through quickly in the soup, so they stay tender rather than gummy or doughy in the middle.
“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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