Skip to main content
Main

Noodle Stew

A stew of pork spare ribs and egg‑flour noodles seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork spare ribs into 3‑inch lengths.

  2. Boil the ribs in plenty of water until tender.

Make the noodles

  1. Prepare the noodles by mixing 1 egg with enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough hard, roll it thin, and cut it into narrow strips.

  3. Flour the noodle strips and toss them together.

Finish the stew

  1. Add the noodles to the stew and season with salt and pepper.

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).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Pork spare ribs
Provide the meat and collagen that give the stew its rich body and flavour as they cook.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into a cohesive, elastic dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the noodles their chewy structure.

The step that matters

Knead the dough hard. Kneading develops gluten, which gives the noodles elasticity so they hold their shape and stay chewy rather than crumbling or turning tough when cooked.

“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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes