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 dough
Mix the eggs with flour until the mixture is too stiff to stir with a spoon.
Place the dough on a clean surface and knead until it is quite stiff.
Roll out the dough as thin as possible.
Cut and dry
Once dry, cut the dough into strips, stack them, and cut into fine pieces.
Spread the cut noodles lightly to dry.
Cook
Boil the noodles for five minutes before serving.
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 and add richness and structure to the dough.
- Flour
- Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the noodles their body.
The step that matters
Knead until quite stiff. Kneading develops gluten, which gives the dough the elasticity needed to roll thin without tearing. Under-kneaded dough is weak and breaks apart when rolled and cut.
“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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