Skip to main content
Main

Noodles and Cheese

A baked dish of boiled noodles topped with a cheese sauce and served with peas or asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Noodles and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the noodles

  1. Boil the Italian egg noodles in water for about 15 minutes.

  2. For homemade noodles, mix 3 tablespoons of flour with 2 beaten eggs to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, adding flour until it forms a stiff ball.

  4. Cut the dough into 4 pieces, roll each piece into sheets, and let them dry for 1 hour.

  5. Cut the dried sheets into strips about 1 inch wide, then cut into threads.

  6. Drop the noodles into boiling water and cook for 15 minutes or until done.

  7. Drain the noodles and rinse with cold water to separate them.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat 1 cup of milk and add 2 cups of grated cheese, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Once the cheese melts, stir in the yolks of 2 beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a baking dish, add the noodles, and pour the cheese mixture over them.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Serve in the baking dish with green peas or asparagus and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Bind the homemade noodle dough and enrich the cheese sauce for a set, custard-like texture.
American cheese
Melts into the milk to give the sauce its smooth, rich body and cheesy flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cheese sauce, keeping it smooth and pourable as it melts.
Italian egg noodles
Provide the starchy base that soaks up the cheese sauce and gives the dish its body.
Flour
Gives the homemade noodle dough structure so it can be rolled and cut into threads.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the cheese sauce. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Remove the sauce from direct heat before adding them and stir steadily.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, cheese, pepper, parsley):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, cheese, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes