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
Prepare the noodles
Beat the eggs well and stir in enough flour to make a very stiff dough.
Roll the dough to the thickness of a wafer and let it dry.
Roll up the sheet and cut it into shavings.
Finish the soup
Boil the veal until tender.
Stir the shavings into the soup 15 minutes before serving.
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).
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Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,845 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,886 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
- Veal
- Provides the main flavor and body of the broth as it simmers until tender.
- Eggs
- Bind the flour into a stiff dough that holds its shape when rolled and dried.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough, giving the noodles their body and chew.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough to wafer thinness and drying it. Dough rolled too thick stays doughy and pasty in the soup instead of cooking into tender noodles. Thin, dried sheets cook quickly and keep their texture in the broth.
“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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