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 ↓
Noodles for Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Beat the eggs and salt thoroughly.
Add enough flour to form a dough.
Roll the dough out very thin and sprinkle flour on top.
Starting from one edge, roll the dough into a long roll.
Cut and dry
Cut the roll into fine shreds or strips with a sharp knife.
Sprinkle flour over each piece and shake off excess flour.
Lay the noodles on a board to dry hard.
Cook and serve
Boil the dried noodles in soup for 20 minutes and serve hot.
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
- Eggs
- Bind the flour into a dough and add richness and structure to the noodles.
- Flour
- Forms the dough's structure and, dusted on, keeps the cut noodles from sticking together.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough cooks through quickly in the soup and gives a tender noodle, while thick dough stays chewy and may remain raw in the centre.
“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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