Why it works: Egg and flour 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 noodles
Beat together the eggs and gradually work in flour until a stiff dough forms.
Roll the dough very thin into large sheets and let it dry on a bread board for 2 hours, turning once.
Roll the dried sheets into a roll and cut into thin strips.
Cook and serve
Bring a kettle of salted water to a boil, add the noodles, and boil for 5 minutes.
Remove the noodles with a porous ladle and serve with the prepared beef stock.
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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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour 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
- Eggs
- Bind the flour into a stiff dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew once cooked.
- Beef stock
- Provides the savory liquid base that the noodles are served in.
The step that matters
Drying the rolled sheets. Letting the thin dough sheets dry for 2 hours firms them enough to be rolled and cut cleanly. Drying too little can leave them sticky and tearing, while the cooked noodles keep their shape and texture better when the dough has dried properly.
“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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