Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓
Noodle Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Beat the yolks of the eggs thoroughly.
Add the flour and knead well for 5 to 10 minutes.
Divide the dough into 4 parts and roll each part thin.
Dry and cut
Place the rolled dough on a clean cloth near the fire to dry.
Once dried enough to not stick together, roll each piece up and cut into very narrow slices, about 1/12 inch wide.
Shake out the noodles and let them dry thoroughly.
Cook and serve
Drop the noodles into boiling salted water and cook for 20 minutes.
Drain the noodles well, add the milk, season with salt, reheat, and serve.
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.
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Flour + milktop 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).
Flour and milk 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
- Yolks bind the flour into a firm, elastic dough that holds its shape when rolled.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten structure that gives the noodles their body and chew.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and richness to the finished soup.
The step that matters
Drying the noodles before cooking. The rolled dough must dry until it no longer sticks together. If it is too moist, the strands clump and stick, and if it is dried too long it becomes brittle and may crack when cut or 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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