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Hungarian White Cheese Cake

A Hungarian dish of dough noodles topped with sour cream, bacon, and grated Gruyère cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hungarian White Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Knead together flour, eggs, a little salt, and cold water into a compact mass.

  2. Let the dough rest for a while.

  3. Roll the dough out thin.

  4. Dry one side of the rolled dough. Dry the other side of the rolled dough.

  5. Cut the dough into palm-width strips. Cut the strips into 1-inch pieces.

Cook the noodles

  1. Heat lard in a large pot. Add sour cream to the lard.

  2. Cook the noodles in salted water. Strain the noodles.

  3. Add the noodles to the pot with the lard and sour cream mixture. Stir the mixture well.

Bake and serve

  1. Cut bacon into squares. Fry the bacon squares until crispy.

  2. Mix half of the bacon squares into the noodles. Reserve the other half of the bacon squares for garnish.

  3. Pour sour cream over the noodles. Top the noodles with the reserved bacon squares. Arrange white cheese around the noodles.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + gruyere cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the noodle pieces together.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and firmness to the noodles.
Lard
Adds fat for flavor and keeps the noodles from sticking in the pot.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang, and a creamy texture to the noodles.
Smoked bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavor and crispy texture.
Gruyere cheese
Adds savory, nutty flavor and melts into a rich topping.

The step that matters

Drying the rolled dough. Drying both sides of the thin dough keeps it from becoming sticky or gummy when cut and cooked, so the noodles hold their shape.

“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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