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Soup Sticks

A yeast dough shaped into strips, baked until crisp, used as a soup accompaniment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Soup Sticks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm water.

  2. Mix in butter, scalded milk, sugar, and salt.

  3. Add flour gradually to form a stiff dough.

  4. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  5. Fold the beaten egg white into the dough last.

  6. Knead the dough vigorously until smooth.

  7. Let it rise in a warm place until light.

  8. Knead it down in the bowl.

Shape and bake

  1. Take pieces the size of an egg.

  2. Roll them into balls.

  3. Shape the balls into strips about 9 inches long and ¾ inch thick.

  4. Place them spaced apart on a baking tin.

  5. Let them rise again.

  6. Bake slowly until crisp and brittle.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yeast
Ferments and produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Egg white
Beaten stiff and folded in, it adds lift and an airy, light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and adds richness.
Milk
Adds moisture, milk solids and sugars that enrich flavour and browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the baked sticks.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg white in last. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg white, so the dough stays light. Stirring or overworking it would deflate the foam and make the sticks denser.

“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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