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, milk or water, and salt.
Work the mixture into a stiff dough.
Cut the dough into 4 strips and knead each until fine-grained.
Roll and cut
Roll out each strip as thin as possible and lay them out to dry.
Once dried, cut the first strip into 4 equal pieces, stack them, and shave off very fine like cabbage.
Pick apart the shavings with floured hands and let them dry a little.
Cook
Boil the noodles a few at a time in salted 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 and add richness, structure and moisture to the dough.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
- Milk or water
- Hydrates the flour so the dough can form and become elastic.
The step that matters
Kneading each strip until fine-grained. Kneading develops gluten, giving the dough elasticity so it can be rolled very thin without tearing and still hold its shape when cooked.
“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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