Noodle Soup
Add noodles to beef or any other soup after straining; they will cook in fifteen or twenty minutes, and are prepared in the following manner: To one egg add as much sifted flour as it will absorb, with a little salt; roll out as thin as a wafer, dredge very lightly with flour, roll over and over into a large roll, slice from the ends, shake out the strips loosely and drop into the soup.
A one-egg noodle dough, cut by the old jelly-roll method. Nothing here has changed except the timing and the way flour behaves in a clear broth.
- The timing is the thing to ignoreNoodles rolled as thin as a wafer and cut narrow are done in three to five minutes, not fifteen or twenty. The longer figure assumes thicker, drier noodles or a cook willing to let them soften into the broth; held that long they turn slack and shed starch.
- How much flour one egg takesExpect roughly 3/4 cup (about 100 g) of all-purpose flour per large egg, plus a good pinch of salt. Work it until the dough is stiff and no longer tacky, then let it rest 20-30 minutes so it will roll thin without springing back.
- Dredging and cloudy brothThe light dusting keeps the rolled sheet from sticking to itself, but that flour goes straight into the soup. Shake the cut strips out in a sieve first, or cook them a minute in boiling water and lift them into the broth if you want it to stay clear.
- "After straining"The recipe assumes a meat stock strained of bones, vegetables and scum. Add the noodles to gently simmering, already-seasoned broth; a hard boil frays them.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll the sheet to the thickness of a postcard or less, let the surface dry for ten minutes so it is leathery rather than damp, then roll it up loosely and slice crosswise. Damp dough welds into a solid log.
- YieldOne egg's worth of dough is enough noodles for about four bowls of soup. Double or triple it and dry the surplus flat on a cloth for a day; it keeps in a tin for weeks.
Buckeye Cookery came out of central Ohio in the 1870s, a region settled heavily by German families, and the noodle it describes is close kin to the German Nudeln, made from egg and flour alone, with no water and no leavening. The roll-and-slice technique is a common household method for cutting noodles before mechanical cutters were common, and it survives in Pennsylvania Dutch and Midwestern kitchens still. The recipe appears under the heading "Noodle Soup," which says something about how it was used: noodles were not a dish so much as a way of extending a pot of beef broth into a meal.