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Potato Noodles

A dough of grated boiled potatoes, eggs, milk, and flour, cut into noodle shapes and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Grate the boiled potatoes.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and milk to the potatoes.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a kneadable dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough into small pieces and roll them into long, round shapes, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Fry the noodles in plenty of lard until they are nicely browned.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Boiled potatoes
Provide the starchy base and moisture that give the noodles their soft body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness to the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness so the dough stays pliable.
Flour
Adds starch and protein that help the dough hold together when kneaded and shaped.
Lard
Conducts heat evenly and promotes browning and a crisp surface when frying.

The step that matters

Fry in plenty of lard until nicely browned. Browning comes from high surface heat reacting with the dough's sugars and proteins, which crisps the outside. Too little fat or low heat leaves the noodles pale, greasy and soft inside.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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