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Sweetened ‘nouilles’, with Lemon-cream

A sweet noodle dish flavored with lemon cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweetened ‘nouilles’, with Lemon-cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Prepare a paste with flour, egg yolks, powdered sugar, salt, and brandy until smooth.

  2. Roll out the paste thinly and cut into ribbons, ⅓ inch wide and 4-5 inches long.

  3. Fry the ribbons in hot fat until golden and drain them.

Make the lemon cream

  1. To make lemon cream, whisk egg yolks and powdered sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Dilute with milk and stir over low heat to avoid boiling until thickened.

  3. Add lemon zest before removing from heat and strain through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Moisten the fried nouilles with lemon cream.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 that holds the ribbons together when fried.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the paste and thicken the cream.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the paste and helps it become smooth.
Milk
Provides liquid that, heated gently with the yolks, sets into a smooth custard.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cream thicken smoothly.

The step that matters

Stir the lemon cream over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but scramble if they get too hot. Gentle heat keeps the cream smooth, so it should be stirred until it thickens and not allowed to boil.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, sugar, brandy, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, brandy, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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