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GNOCCHIS (a la Francaise)
Pour a glass of water into a saucepan, add a pinch of salt, pepper, sugar, and about one ounce of butter; boil, and then add about a quarter of a pound of well-sifted dried flour; stir well and cook for a few minutes. Put this into a basin: add an egg, and knead well; then another egg, and mix it thoroughly: lastly an ounce of grated Parmesan and Gruyere cheese, and a pinch of nutmeg. When thoroughly amalgamated, put the whole into a linen bag with a medium-sized forcing pipe attached to it, and have ready a pan filled with slightly salted boiling water. Take the bag in the left hand and press it, in order to force out the paste in strings. Cut the strings in pieces with a sharp knife as they drop out into the water. Then put the pan upon the fire and boil the contents slowly for a few minutes. Drain them, and keep warm in a little hot stock. Used as a garnishing for consommes or chicken broth. Probable cost, 8d.
This is choux paste poached in water rather than baked — what is now usually called gnocchi à la parisienne. It is built as a soup garnish, not a main dish, and the quantities are small.
- A glass of water"Glass" is not defined in the recipe; period usage ranges from about 2 fl oz (a wineglass) to about 5 fl oz (a gill), so roughly 60-150 ml. Taken at the larger end, with 4 oz (115 g) of flour it gives a stiff paste.
- Weights in modern termsA quarter pound of flour is 4 oz or about 1 cup scooped and levelled (115 g); 1 oz of butter is 2 tablespoons; the cheese is 1 oz total, split between Parmesan and Gruyère.
- Well-sifted dried flour"Dried" flour meant flour warmed briefly to drive off damp. Plain modern all-purpose flour needs no such treatment; sifting still helps it go in without lumps.
- The hinge: dry the panade"Cook for a few minutes" means stirring the paste over heat until it comes together in a smooth mass and leaves a film on the pan base — two to three minutes. Underdried paste absorbs too much poaching water and the gnocchi collapse.
- Adding the eggsLet the paste cool for a few minutes first, then beat in the eggs one at a time and work each in fully before the next. Two eggs is right for this quantity; the paste should just hold a shape when piped.
- The linen bag and forcing pipeA piping bag with a plain round tip of roughly 1/2 inch. Pipe over the pan and cut the lengths into short pieces with a sharp knife as they emerge, as directed.
- Boil slowlyTake this literally — the water should be at a bare shiver, no more. A rolling boil tears the paste apart. Three to four minutes at a trembling simmer, until they float and feel set, is enough.
- Yield and useA soup garnish rather than a dish in itself; the quantity will serve several bowls of consomm he, as the recipe directs, keeps them from sticking and drying.
- Probable cost, 8dEightpence in late-Victorian money — the pricing was a standard feature of the book, meant to let a cook or housekeeper budget a menu at a glance.
Gnocchi in Italian usage covers a wide family of small dumplings, from semolina to potato, and the name is generally traced to a word for a knot or lump in wood. The version here is the French kitchen's adaptation: instead of semolina or potato, it uses pâte à choux, the same flour-and-butter paste that makes profiteroles, poached rather than baked and enriched with grated cheese. That approach is now known as gnocchi à la parisienne, and Cassell's heading "à la Française" points to the same borrowing. These small garnishes — quenelles, royales, profiteroles, these gnocchi — give body and interest to an otherwise clear soup, and mastering one panade taught the technique behind several of them at once.