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
Make the noodles
In a bowl, combine 2 eggs with enough flour to form a very stiff dough.
Roll out the dough as thin as possible and let it dry slightly.
Fold one edge of the dough and roll it into a long cylinder.
Using a sharp knife, cut the rolled dough into thin slices.
Serve
Add the noodle slices to boiling plain beef soup just 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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Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Eggs
- Bind the flour into a dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Flour
- Forms the main body of the dough, giving the noodles their structure once dried and cooked.
The step that matters
Letting the dough dry slightly before cutting. If the rolled dough is too moist, it sticks to itself and the knife and slices unevenly. A slightly dried surface keeps the layers separate and the noodle slices clean.
“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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