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German Noodles

German noodles are small, boiled pasta pieces added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Beat the eggs well and work in flour to make a firm paste.

  2. Knead well and divide into two parts.

  3. Roll each part out thin and let it dry for a little while without hardening.

  4. Roll it up and cut into small pieces the size of a large pea.

  5. Scatter the pieces in boiling salted water.

  6. When cooked through, drain and add to your boiling soup. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Make the fried dumplings

  1. Beat 1 egg with a pinch of salt until frothy; work in about 3 tablespoons of sifted flour until it forms a firm, smooth, elastic paste.

  2. Roll it out on a slightly floured board until as thin as writing paper.

  3. Slip a smooth, slightly floured cloth under the sheet of paste and cover it to roll it thinner.

  4. Cut the paste into rounds with a thimble or small cutter, folding the paste to cut two discs at a time.

  5. Heat a saucepan of deep boiling lard. When boiling, drop in the discs of paste, which will swell into golden balls in about a minute.

  6. Skim them out, drain on brown paper, and add to the soup.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 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 paste that holds its shape when rolled and cut.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste, giving it firmness and elasticity when kneaded.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, so the discs puff and turn golden and crisp.

The step that matters

Frying the paste discs in boiling lard. The lard must be fully boiling before the discs go in. Hot fat heats the moisture in the paste quickly, making it puff into hollow golden balls; cooler fat lets the discs soak up grease and stay heavy.

“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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