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Gateau De Nouilles
Take the yolks of five eggs and the white of one, and sufficient flour to form a stiff paste; roll it out as thin as a water, then roll it up very lightly, and cut it into strings as fine as a packthread; shake the strings together and throw them into water already boiling on the fire; let them boil five minutes. Then put them into a colander, and let some cold water run through it; drain it well. Butter a mould, sprinkle it well with fine bread-crumbs, then put in the nouilles prepared as above, mixed with a quarter of a pound of sugar and the grated peel of a lemon. Melt two ounces of butter and pour over this; sprinkle some breadcrumbs on top, and bake in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s.
A sweet baked noodle cake made from egg-rich homemade pasta. The hinge is the noodles: cut them very fine and undercook them, because they finish in the oven for three-quarters of an hour.
- "Thin as a water"A printer's slip for thin as a wafer. Roll the dough until you can read print through it, then roll the sheet loosely and slice across into threads.
- PackthreadCoarse twine used for tying parcels, roughly 1-2 mm thick. That is the target width for the cut noodles.
- Flour quantityFive yolks and one white take about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups (roughly 155-190 g) of flour to make a paste stiff enough to roll thin. Add it gradually; the exact amount depends on egg size.
- Boiling timeFive minutes will turn threads this fine to mush. Fresh noodles cut to packthread width need 60-90 seconds in fast-boiling salted water, and here they should come out firm since they bake for another 45 minutes.
- Sugar and butterA quarter of a pound of sugar is about 115 g, a generous half cup; two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (55 g). Toss the sugar and lemon zest through the noodles while they are still slightly warm so it distributes.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Bake until the top crumbs are well browned and the edges have set into a crust that pulls from the mould.
- MouldA buttered and crumbed mould of about 1 1/2 quarts, a pudding basin or a deep cake tin. Let it settle for a few minutes before turning out.
- Yield and servingServes six as a pudding, warm rather than hot, with cream or a fruit compote. The "probable cost, 1s." is the Victorian equivalent of a per-recipe budget note, not an instruction.
Nouilles is simply the French for noodles, borrowed in turn from the German Nudel, and sweet baked noodle cakes with sugar, butter, lemon peel and sometimes raisins were long established in Austrian and German kitchens, and in Jewish cooking as kugel. The point of the exercise is the paste itself, an all-yolk dough rolled to a wafer and cut by hand.