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Noodle Soup

A soup made with boiled chicken and handmade noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Noodle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the chicken until the meat separates from the bones, skimming the surface well.

Make the noodles

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of flour with 2 beaten eggs.

  2. Add more flour until the mixture is quite stiff.

  3. Roll the dough thin, sprinkle flour over it, and roll it up.

  4. Cut the rolled dough into pieces about ½ inch wide.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the noodle pieces to the boiling soup and cook for 15 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure, and the extra flour keeps the stiff dough workable for rolling.
Eggs
Bind the flour into a dough and add richness and firmness to the noodles.
Chicken
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers with the bones.

The step that matters

Adding more flour until the mixture is quite stiff. Flour absorbs liquid from the eggs and gluten develops as it is worked, so the dough needs enough flour to hold together. Too little flour leaves a sticky dough that tears when rolled and turns gummy in the soup.

“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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