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Ribbon Macaroni or Nouilles

A homemade pasta made from flour, egg, cheese, and salt, rolled thin and cut into strips, boiled and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg 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 ↓

Ribbon Macaroni or Nouilles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Mix in flour, cheese, and salt, adding water if necessary to form a stiff paste.

  3. Wrap the paste in a floured cloth and let it rest for about 1 hour.

Cut and cook

  1. Roll out the paste very thin and cut it into narrow strips.

  2. Flour the strips lightly and cook a few at a time in boiling salted water for a few minutes.

  3. Add the cooked strips to soup as needed.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the paste and gives the cooked strips their body.
Egg
Adds binding and richness, helping the stiff paste hold together when rolled thin.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and a little fat to the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste very thin. Thin strips cook through quickly in boiling water, while thick pieces stay doughy in the centre. Gluten in the rested dough also makes it easier to roll thin 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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