Name: Doodle Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart beef bouillon; 2 teaspoons salt; ½ pint noodles; a pinch grated nutmeg; 3 eggs; 3 tablespoons milk; flour (for dough)

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Doodle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Heat 1 quart of beef bouillon with 2 teaspoons of salt in a pot.
Add ½ pint of noodles to the pot.
Cook the noodles for 30 minutes.

Make the dough

Beat 3 eggs and 3 tablespoons of milk together in a bowl.
Sift flour into a pan.
Make a hole in the center of the pan.
Stir in the egg mixture to form a stiff dough.
Divide the dough into two parts.
Roll each part out thinly.
Let the rolled dough dry for 2 hours.
Roll the dried dough tightly.
Cut the dough into fine rings.
Shake out the rings to separate them.

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.

Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 stiff dough and add structure to the rings.
Flour: Forms the base of the dough that is rolled, dried, and cut into rings.
Milk: Adds moisture to the egg mixture so it combines smoothly with the flour.
Noodles: Cooked in the bouillon to make the soup's main body.