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 ↓
Noodles for Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the noodles
In a bowl, mix the eggs with enough sifted flour to form a dough.
Roll the dough out as thin as a wafer.
Dust with a little flour, then roll it up tightly.
Cut thin slices from the edge of the roll to create long strips.
Cook
Add the strips to the soup and boil for 10 minutes.
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).
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 dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Sifted flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the noodles their body and chew.
The step that matters
Roll the dough as thin as a wafer. Thin noodles cook through quickly and stay tender. Thick dough stays dense and doughy in the centre, even when the soup is boiling.
“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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