Name: White Cheese Noodles
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 2 eggs; ½ pint sour cream; Coarse sea salt; Hot lard; Grated salted cheese (grubber)

Why it works: Cream and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,655 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Cheese Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the noodles

Knead together the flour and eggs until smooth.
Roll out the dough to knife-edge thickness.
Cut the dough into long strips, as wide as they are thick.
Cook the noodles in a pot of salted boiling water until tender.

Serve

Place the cooked noodles on a platter.
In a pan, heat the sour cream in hot lard and pour it over the noodles.
Top the noodles with grated salted cheese in a wreath-like arrangement.

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.

Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,655 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,253 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 dough and gives the noodles their body when cooked.
Eggs: Bind the dough and add richness and firmness to the noodles.
Sour cream: Heated in the lard, it adds a tangy, creamy coating over the noodles.
Grated salted cheese: Adds salty flavour and a savoury topping that melts slightly over the warm noodles.

“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.