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Potato Noodles

A dish of boiled potato noodles topped with browned bread and beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine grated potatoes, sweet milk, beaten egg, and salt.

  2. Add flour until the mixture forms a stiff dough.

Shape and cook the noodles

  1. Take a walnut-sized piece of dough and roll it out to about a finger length and thickness, using flour to prevent sticking.

  2. Cook the noodles in boiling salted water for about 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the noodles and keep them hot on a platter.

Finish and serve

  1. Brown small pieces of bread in hot butter and place over the noodles.

  2. Beat 3 eggs and pour over the hot noodles to cook them slightly.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the starch that binds the dough and gives the noodles their body.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Beaten egg
Helps bind the dough so the noodles hold their shape while cooking.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture into a dough that can be rolled and hold its shape.
Butter
Browns the bread pieces, adding fat and a toasted flavor.
Eggs
Pour over the hot noodles, where they cook gently and set into a light coating.

The step that matters

Add flour until the mixture forms a stiff dough. Too little flour leaves the dough sticky and the noodles fall apart in the water, while too much makes them dense and tough. Add it gradually until the dough holds together.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, butter, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, butter, bread. 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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