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Beef Noodle Soup

A soup made with beef and mutton bones, ham, onion, carrot, herbs, and homemade noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Noodle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs for one minute and mix with water and salt.

  2. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough and knead for 15 minutes.

  3. Roll the dough into a thin sheet and cut half into long strips less than ½ inch wide.

  4. Cut the strips into pieces about 4 inches long.

  5. Roll the other half of the sheet tightly into a scroll and cut into wheels less than ¼ inch wide.

  6. Lay the noodles in a sunny window to dry for 2 hours.

Make the stock

  1. For the stock, boil beef bones, mutton bones, and ham in 3 quarts of water with onion, carrot, and herbs.

  2. Boil down to 2 quarts, strain, cool, skim, and season.

Cook and serve

  1. Add a handful of noodles to the boiling stock a few at a time and simmer for 20 minutes.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its chewy, stiff structure.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the stock, giving body and depth.
Mutton bones
Add gelatin and a richer, savoury flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Add the noodles a few at a time. Adding too many noodles at once drops the stock's temperature and lets them clump and stick together, so they cook unevenly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, beef, mutton, ham, onion):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, beef, mutton, ham, onion. 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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