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 dough
Beat the eggs in a bowl.
Add a pinch of salt and enough flour to form a stiff dough.
Roll the dough into very thin sheets and dredge with flour to prevent sticking.
Turn the sheets often until they are dry enough to cut.
Cut the dried sheets into very fine noodles.
Serve
Add the noodles to the stock five minutes before serving.
Season to taste.
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.
- Flour
- Forms the stiff dough structure and, dusted on the sheets, keeps them from sticking.
The step that matters
Turning the sheets until dry enough to cut. If the sheets are still moist, they stick together and tear when cut into fine noodles. Turning them often lets air dry both faces evenly so the dough firms up before cutting.
“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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