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Hungarian Noodles

A noodle dish made from egg, milk, water, flour, and cottage cheese, served hot with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hungarian Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cut the end off a fresh egg to drop the egg out.

  2. Add ½ cup milk, ⅓ cup water, and a pinch of salt to the egg.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly into 6 small sheets.

  5. Layer the sheets on top of each other and cut into strips 1 inch wide.

  6. Set the strips aside to dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the noodles into boiling salted water and cook until tender.

  2. Drain the noodles and sprinkle 1 pound of cottage cheese lightly through them.

  3. Serve hot, dusted with finely minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cottage cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + cottage cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Fresh egg
Binds the flour and liquid into a dough and adds richness to the noodles.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together after rolling and cutting.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the dough, softening the flour for a tender noodle.
Cottage cheese
Adds creamy moisture and tang when sprinkled through the drained noodles.

The step that matters

Drying the strips before cooking. Dry strips hold their shape and keep their texture in boiling water, while damp strips can stick together and cook unevenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, cottage cheese):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, cottage cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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