Mix 2 eggs and ½ cup of water, a pinch of salt and enough flour to make a stiff batter. Then drop by the tablespoonful into boiling salted water until they rise to the surface. Remove to a platter and fry some onions in hot butter. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and pour over the dumplings.
A plain egg-and-flour dumpling of the Central European kind, finished with browned onions in butter. The whole thing hinges on batter consistency and on not overcooking after the dumplings float.
- How much flour"Enough flour to make a stiff batter" gives no quantity; somewhere in the region of 1 to 1½ cups for 2 eggs and ½ cup water is a reasonable starting point, adjusted by eye. Aim for a batter that holds its shape on the spoon but still drops off with a shake.
- Rest the batterTen to fifteen minutes off the heat lets the flour hydrate, which keeps the dumplings from being floury in the centre. It also firms the batter slightly, making it easier to portion.
- Rising is not the same as doneThey surface within a minute or two, well before the interior is set. Give them another 3 to 5 minutes at a bare simmer once they float, then cut one open to check.
- Keep the water at a simmerA hard boil tears soft egg batter apart. Salt the water generously — about 1 tablespoon per 4 quarts — since the dumplings themselves carry very little salt.
- Work in batchesCrowding drops the water temperature and the dumplings stick together. Dip the spoon in the hot water between portions so the batter releases cleanly.
- The onionsFor this quantity, two medium onions sliced thin in 3 to 4 tablespoons of butter, cooked slowly for 15 to 20 minutes until deep gold. The recipe's brevity hides the fact that this is the dish's only real flavour; rushing them to pale limpness wastes it.
- YieldServes three as a side dish, two as a supper. Serve immediately — drained dumplings stiffen and dry as they sit.
Boiled egg-batter dumplings run through the whole German-speaking world under a shifting set of names: Nockerl in Austria, Spätzle and Knöpfle in Swabia, galuska and nokedli in Hungary. The distinction between them is mostly a matter of how the batter is portioned — spooned, scraped off a board, or pushed through a perforated plate — rather than of ingredients, which stay close to eggs, flour, salt and water or milk. Calling them "Vienna dumplings" and finishing them with butter-browned onions places this version in the Habsburg kitchen repertoire that cookbook writers were fond of surveying. Books of this type, one dish a day from a different country, were a genre unto themselves: they promised the American housekeeper variety without demanding unfamiliar ingredients, and a recipe like this one — pantry staples, one pan, one pot — was exactly the sort that could carry a foreign name without alarming anyone.