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
In a bowl, mix the eggs with enough sifted flour to form a dough.
Roll out the dough until it is as thin as a wafer.
Dust the rolled dough with a little flour, then roll it up tightly.
Cut thin slices from the edge of the roll to create long strips.
Add the noodle strips to the soup and boil for 10 minutes.
Mix in the coarse sea salt while preparing the dough.
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 firm dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Sifted flour
- Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough as thin as a wafer. Thin, evenly rolled dough cooks through quickly and cooks at the same rate across each noodle. Uneven or thick dough stays raw in places while thin spots turn mushy.
“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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