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Noodles, German

German noodles made from eggs, milk, flour, and salt, baked into thin strips and served with browned breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Noodles, German

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and make a hollow in the center.

  2. Add eggs and milk, then beat thoroughly to form a light dough.

  3. Knead the dough gradually, adding flour until smooth and stiff.

Shape and dry

  1. Cut the dough into 4 parts and roll each out as thin as possible.

  2. Let the rolled dough dry enough to cut into fine strips about 1/8 inch wide.

  3. Toss the strips to separate and leave to dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the noodles in boiling salted water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain and place in a dish, then pour over browned bread crumbs mixed with plenty of butter.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and add structure and richness to the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and make the dough pliable.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly and drying it before cutting. Dough rolled too thick or cut while still moist can stick together or cook up gummy. Letting the sheets dry until leathery gives clean strips that hold their shape in boiling water.

“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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