Skip to main content
Main

Noodles for Soup

A simple dough noodle made from eggs, butter, sour cream, flour, and salt, boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Noodles for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the eggs, butter, sour cream, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough, then roll it out very thin.

Cut and cook

  1. Cut the rolled dough into narrow strips.

  2. Cook the noodles in boiling water for about 30 minutes or until tender.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the noodles.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and mild acidity, keeping the dough soft and pliable.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough cooks through evenly and stays tender. Thick sheets stay doughy in the centre and cook unevenly, so the noodles turn out heavy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes