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 ↓
Macaroni and Noodles
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Make a hole in the middle of the flour.
Add the eggs, then the milk or water, then the salt.
Work the mixture into a stiff dough.
Cut the dough into 4 strips.
Knead each strip until fine-grained.
Shape the noodles
Roll out each strip as thin as possible.
Lay them out to dry.
Once dried, cut the first sheet into 4 equal pieces.
Stack the pieces.
Shave off very fine strips.
Pick apart the shavings with floured hands.
Let them dry a little.
Cook
Boil the noodles a few at a time in salted boiling water until tender.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 into a dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
- Milk or water
- Hydrates the flour so it can form a cohesive, workable dough.
The step that matters
Knead each strip until fine-grained. Kneading develops gluten so the dough becomes elastic. Under-kneaded dough is weak and tears when rolled thin, while well-worked dough holds together.
“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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