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Noodle Auflauf

A baked noodle casserole made with eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Noodle Auflauf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the noodles

  1. Make a noodle dough with 4 eggs.

  2. Cut the dough into noodles and boil in 1 cup of milk with ¼ teaspoon salt added.

  3. Drain the noodles.

Make the mixture and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 4 eggs, ¼ cup sugar, and ½ cup butter until creamy.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and the drained noodles.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provide structure and richness, with yolks enriching the custard and whites lightening the mixture when beaten.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the noodles as they boil, while contributing to the custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently preserves that air; stirring hard deflates the foam and leaves a denser casserole.

“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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