Boil some fine noodles in salted water for ten minutes; let drain. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs with 1 cup of pulverized sugar and mix with the noodles. Add ½ cup of raisins, ½ cup of pounded almonds, a pinch of cinnamon and the whites of the eggs beaten to a froth. Put in a well-buttered pudding-dish and bake until brown. Serve hot with lemon sauce.
A sweet baked noodle pudding in the Austrian style, written with the brevity of a cook who expected you to know the proportions already. The quantity of noodles is never stated, which is the main thing to settle before you begin.
- How many noodlesFive eggs and a cup of sugar will carry about 8 oz (dry weight) of fine egg noodles, which is roughly 4 cups cooked. Much more and the custard cannot bind it; much less and it bakes into a sweet omelette.
- Pulverized sugarThis means finely ground sugar, closer to today's superfine (caster) than to confectioners' sugar. Superfine dissolves into the yolks without grit; granulated works if you beat it long enough to ribbon.
- Ten minutes is for 1900 noodlesTen minutes may be long for modern noodles -- Dried egg noodles today generally reach al dente in less time; go by the package. Undercook them slightly, since they will absorb custard and continue to soften in the oven.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F, uncovered, for 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is browned and the centre is set rather than liquid when the dish is tilted.
- Fold, do not stirThe beaten whites are the only lift this pudding has. Fold them in with a spatula in two additions after everything else is combined, and get it into the buttered dish promptly.
- Pounded almondsBlanched almonds pounded in a mortar, which gives a coarser, oilier texture than commercial almond flour. Pulse whole blanched almonds a few times in a food processor to get closer to the original.
- RaisinsSoak them for ten minutes in warm water, or in rum if you like, and pat dry. Dry raisins pull moisture from the custard and scorch where they sit at the surface.
- Lemon sauceThe book assumes you know it: a cornstarch-thickened sugar syrup finished with lemon juice, zest and butter, served warm. Any standard lemon dessert sauce will do.
- YieldServes 6 to 8 from a buttered 2-quart baking dish. Best eaten hot, as with most baked noodle puddings it turns dense once cold.
Sweet baked noodle puddings run through the whole of Central European cooking, from the Austrian Nudelauflauf to the Jewish lokshen kugel, and the family resemblance here is unmistakable: noodles, eggs, sugar, raisins, almonds, cinnamon. Vienna in the nineteenth century was the pastry capital of the empire and the point at which Bohemian, Hungarian and Jewish kitchen traditions met, which is why a dish like this can be labelled Viennese without anyone being able to say precisely whose it was first. Its appearance in a book that assigns a nation to each day of the year says as much about the format as about Austria. It is a book of the twentieth century, offering American households a tour of the world in dishes that could be made from ordinary pantry stock.