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War Mein

A Chinese noodle soup with pork, celery, mushrooms, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and sesame oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Water chestnut and sesame share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 74 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

War Mein

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the noodles

  1. Boil the noodles in at least 1 gallon of water with a pinch of salt until done, about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the noodles in a colander and place half in each bowl.

  3. Pour 1 cup of hot chicken or beef stock into each bowl and add 2 teaspoons of Chinese salty sauce.

Cook the topping

  1. In a pan, fry the pork in 1 teaspoon of lard or meat drippings until half cooked.

  2. Add the celery, mushrooms, water chestnuts, bamboo shoot, ½ cup stock, and salty sauce.

  3. Stew on high heat with a tight-fitting lid for about 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the sesame oil and cornstarch mixture.

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. Water chestnut + sesametop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Onion + sesametop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Water chestnut + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together205 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh noodles
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the hot stock, giving it a soft, chewy body.
Lean pork
Provides savory meaty flavor and substance in the topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, silky sauce when stirred in.
Bamboo shoot
Adds a crisp, crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft noodles.

The step that matters

Stew with the tight-fitting lid on high heat. The lid traps steam so the vegetables and pork cook through evenly in the small amount of liquid. Keeping the heat high brings the stock to a steady simmer, which the later cornstarch needs in order to thicken properly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, pork, mushroom, water chestnut, onion, sesame):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, pork, mushroom, water chestnut, onion, sesame. 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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