Mix 2 eggs with 1 tablespoonful of water, a pinch of salt and enough sifted flour to make a stiff dough. Roll out on a well-floured baking-board as thin as possible. Cut into three-inch squares and fill with the following mixture: 1 cup of cottage cheese; mix with 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 beaten eggs, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. Fill the dumplings, press the edges well together. Boil some milk, seasoned with a pinch of salt and sugar to taste. Lay in the dumplings and boil until done. Serve with the sauce.
A plain egg-noodle dough wrapped around sweetened fresh cheese and simmered in milk rather than water — the milk becomes the sauce, so it needs watching more than the dumplings do.
- The hinge: keep the milk below a rolling boilMilk scorches on the bottom of the pan and boils over the top the moment your back is turned. Use a wide, heavy pan, keep it at a bare simmer, and stir gently under the dumplings rather than through them.
- Drain the cheeseCottage cheese sold today is generally wetter than the drained home-made curd such recipes were likely built on. Drain a cup in a sieve for 20-30 minutes, or use dry curd cheese or well-drained ricotta, or the filling will weep and burst the seams.
- Flour quantityTwo eggs plus a tablespoon of water will take roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour for a stiff dough. Add it gradually; the dough should be firm enough to resist the thumb, then rest 30 minutes covered so it rolls thin without springing back.
- SealingEgg dough that has sat on a floured board will not stick to itself. Brush the edges with water or beaten egg, press out the air, and crimp firmly — these are boiled in liquid you intend to serve, so a leak spoils the sauce as well as the dumpling.
- "Boil until done"Eight to twelve minutes at a simmer, depending on how thin the dough is rolled. They are done when they float and the dough at the sealed edge, which is thickest, is tender rather than chalky.
- Sweetening the milkSugar "to taste" here means lightly sweetened, not a custard. About a tablespoon per two cups of milk, with the pinch of salt, is in keeping; heavier sugaring makes the milk catch and brown faster.
- Yield and servingTwo eggs of dough and a cup of cheese make roughly 12 to 16 three-inch dumplings, enough for four as a sweet course or two as a supper. Serve in shallow bowls with the hot milk spooned over, and a further dusting of cinnamon if you like.
Filled dumplings of this kind belong to a broad Central European family — Hungarian derelye, Polish and Ukrainian pierogi, the Austrian tascherl — all built on a stiff egg-and-flour dough cut into squares or rounds and stuffed with fresh curd cheese sweetened with sugar and warm spice. Cooking them in sweetened milk rather than salted water, and serving the milk as the sauce, looks like the frugal version: the poaching liquid is the dish. Fresh cheese was the everyday product of a household that kept a cow or bought from a dairy daily, and books like this one, which marched a reader through a year of dishes from many countries one page at a time, leaned on such dishes because the ingredients were already in the kitchen. The generic title given here — Hungarian dumplings, with no regional name attached — is typical of compilations of this sort, which tended to flatten a specific dish into a national label for readers who had no other point of reference.