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German Noodles

German noodles are made from egg, flour, and salt, then boiled and served with browned butter and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

German Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg and add a pinch of salt.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into a very thin sheet and dredge with flour to prevent sticking.

  4. After about 1 hour, roll the sheet tightly and cut into fine strips for soup noodles or ½ inch wide strips for a separate dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir the strips into boiling salted water and boil for about 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the noodles and serve on a hot platter, topped with browned butter and browned bread crumbs.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Egg
Binds the flour into a dough and adds richness and structure to the noodles.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough whose gluten network gives the noodles their chewy structure.
Butter
Browned for topping, it adds nutty aroma and rich flavour.
Bread crumbs
Browned for topping, they add crisp texture and toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Rolling the sheet thin and letting it rest before cutting. A very thin sheet is needed for tender noodles, and the flour dusting keeps layers from sticking. Resting the dough for about an hour relaxes the gluten so the sheet can be rolled tightly and cut cleanly without tearing.

“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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