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 ↓
Noodle Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, combine 1 egg, ½ cup cold water, and a pinch of salt.
Gradually add enough flour to form a dough that can be handled.
Cut and cook the noodles
Roll the dough thin and cut it into strips about 1½ inches wide.
Stack the strips and slice them into very thin noodles.
Drop the noodles into boiling soup stock and cook for 20 minutes.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Adds richness and helps bind the dough together for a firmer noodle.
- Flour
- Forms gluten with the liquid, giving the dough structure and a chewy bite.
- Cold water
- Hydrates the flour so the mixture comes together into a workable dough.
The step that matters
Gradually add the flour. Adding flour a little at a time lets you stop once the dough is handleable. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, so the noodles turn out tough and crumbly.
“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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