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Swedish Noodles

A thin dough of egg, flour, and salt is rolled, cut into discs, fried in lard, and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Swedish Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg with a pinch of salt until frothy.

  2. Work in about 3 tablespoons of sifted flour until a firm, smooth, elastic paste forms.

  3. Knead the paste until smooth, then roll it out on a floured board until very thin.

  4. Slip a floured cloth under the paste and cover it to roll it even thinner.

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

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep boiling lard in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Drop the discs into the boiling lard; they will swell into golden balls in about a minute.

  3. Skim them out and drain on brown paper before adding to 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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Egg
Binds the flour into a firm, elastic paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Sifted flour
Forms the structure of the paste, giving the noodles their body once fried.
Lard
Frying fat that heats the discs quickly so they puff and turn golden.

The step that matters

Dropping the discs into the boiling lard. The paste must be rolled very thin and the fat must be fully boiling. Thin discs in hot fat puff quickly and brown evenly, while cooler fat lets them soak up grease and turn 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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