Noodles
Work into two eggs a sufficient amount of flour to make a stiff dough, salt to season, then roll out into sheets as thin as possible; let dry before cutting. Then roll up as you would jelly cake and cut very fine; noodles added ten minutes before serving the soup.
A two-ingredient egg noodle for garnishing broth, written for cooks who judged dough by feel. The only real decisions are how much flour the eggs will take and how long the cut noodles need in the pot.
- The hinge: a genuinely stiff doughTwo large eggs will absorb roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups (140-175 g) of flour before the dough stops taking any more. It should feel dry and firm, almost crumbly, and take real effort to knead — a soft dough will not roll thin without tearing and will swell into dumplings in the soup.
- No waterThe recipe gives none, and none should be added. Egg is the entire liquid, which is what makes the noodles hold their shape in hot broth. If the dough will not come together, rest it 20 minutes covered and knead again rather than wetting it.
- "Let dry" means surface-dryLay the rolled sheets on a cloth for 20-45 minutes, until they feel leathery and no longer tacky but still bend without cracking. Fully dried sheets shatter when you roll and slice them.
- Rolling and cuttingDust the sheet with flour before rolling it up, or the coils weld together. "Very fine" here means about 1/16 inch; shake the cut noodles loose immediately so they do not stick in a mass.
- Ten minutes is for noodles cut thicker than thisTen minutes may be longer than needed -- Noodles rolled as thin as the recipe demands are done in 2 to 4 minutes in simmering broth, though the recipe's own sheets are dried before cutting, which lengthens things somewhat. Give them the full ten only if they have been dried hard for storage, and taste rather than watch the clock.
- Where the salt goesA generous pinch in the dough seasons the noodle itself; the broth does the rest. Noodles dropped straight into soup release starch and cloud it slightly -- cook them in salted water and drain if you want a clear consommé.
- YieldTwo eggs' worth makes enough to garnish 6 to 8 bowls of soup. Surplus noodles can be dried completely on a rack and kept in a tin for a few weeks.
Egg noodles cut from a rolled-and-coiled sheet are associated with the German and Austrian Nudeln that came into American kitchens with Central European immigration, though similar noodles were made in English-speaking households too. Cookbooks of this kind commonly gave no quantities at all — the dough was judged by hand, as bread was. Its place in the soup chapter is telling: noodles here are not a dish but a garnish, one of a family of broth additions that included egg drops, marrow balls, sponge dumplings and squares of custard royale, all intended to give a thin household stock some substance. The instruction to dry the sheets before cutting may also point to the domestic habit of making a large batch at once and storing the surplus, since dried egg noodles keep well.