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Dessert

Noodles As a Vegetable

A pudding made with boiled noodles, apples, milk, butter, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Noodles As a Vegetable

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Melt the butter in the milk and stir in the corn starch.

  2. Remove from heat and beat the eggs with the sugar, then stir into the milk mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the grated apples with the sugar and nutmeg.

  2. In a small pudding pan, layer noodles, apples, and a few tablespoons of the milk mixture, repeating until all ingredients are used, finishing with the milk.

  3. Place the pudding pan in a larger pan with boiling water and bake for 30 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and help it set into a soft, sliceable pudding when baked.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its body instead of running.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the custard.
Noodles
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the custard as it bakes.
Grated apples
Add moisture and a tart fruity flavor that contrasts with the sweet custard.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the milk after removing it from the heat. Adding beaten eggs to very hot milk can scramble them into lumps. Cooling the mixture slightly first lets the eggs blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, corn, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, corn, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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