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Macaroni Nudels
Nudel paste, like Italian macaroni, to which it is nearly allied, is a "home-made" preparation of eggs and flour, useful in a variety of ways, and equally applicable to sweet and savoury dishes. It is made thus. Take as many eggs as will be required for the quantity of paste to be made, but use only the whites of eggs if preferred quite white. Work in as much flour to two well-beaten eggs as will make a stiff dough, knead until smooth, and roll out, first dividing the mass into six parts, and each part into a round ball, on a pasteboard kept well dredged with flour. A perfectly straight rolling-pin is one of the requisites to perfect nudel making. The desired thinness to which the paste is to be rolled may be best illustrated by the saying, "That to arrive at the perfection of nudel rolling is to be able to read through the paste." Having accomplished this, dry each cake on a napkin--a few minutes will do this--commence with the first rolled cake by cutting it into equal halves and quarters. Lay one quarter on the other, make the cut edges meet equally, and with a sharp knife cut through in as thread-like a manner as possible, then dry--by scattering them they will separate; or the paste rolled, as before indicated, is cut with a tin-cutter into stars, rings, etc., which may be stamped out, and piled one cake on the other; they will separate on being thrown into boiling soup.
A recipe given in proportions rather than measures: eggs first, flour to suit. The instructions are sound, but a few things a Victorian cook took for granted are worth spelling out.
- The proportion, in modern termsTwo well-beaten eggs will take roughly 1½ to 1¾ cups (200-225 g) of plain flour before the dough turns stiff. Flour absorbency varies enough that the original's "as much flour as will make a stiff dough" is still the honest instruction; add the last quarter-cup by feel.
- Whites onlyThe all-white version takes roughly three to four egg whites in place of two whole eggs. The dough is drier, less rich and noticeably tougher to roll, and the recipe gives appearance as the reason ('if preferred quite white'). Yolk-based dough is easier to work.
- Rest the doughThe one step the text omits. After kneading until smooth, wrap the dough and leave it 30 minutes at room temperature. Rolling to the stated thinness without a rest means fighting elastic gluten the whole way.
- "Read through the paste"Not pure hyperbole: it implies a sheet well under a millimetre, thin enough to be translucent. On a pasta machine that means one of the thinnest settings. Thicker sheets give doughy, slumping noodles in soup.
- Drying before cuttingThe brief drying on a napkin is what keeps the cut threads from welding back together. The recipe allows only 'a few minutes'; the sheet should feel leathery, not brittle, and a fully dried sheet will shatter under the knife.
- Cooking timeFresh nudels dropped into boiling soup need roughly 1 to 3 minutes, depending on thickness. If dried hard for storage, allow 4 to 6.
- StorageThoroughly air-dried noodles keep for weeks in a tin. Anything still pliable should be refrigerated and used within a day or two, or frozen loose on a tray — it is raw egg dough, not a shelf-stable product.
- YieldReckon two eggs and their flour as roughly four soup portions, or two as a main-dish serving.
"Nudel" is simply the German Nudel, and the paste reads as a domestic, Northern European cousin to the factory-made macaroni then arriving from Italy. Egg-and-flour noodles of this kind are long established across the German-speaking lands and Central Europe, where they served as soup garnish, side dish and, sweetened with sugar and fruit, as pudding; the recipe's insistence that the paste suits "sweet and savoury dishes" alike reflects that double life. The stamped stars and rings at the end belong to the Victorian enthusiasm for tin cutters and for clear consommés dressed with small decorative shapes. The proud claim that a good sheet can be read through is a workshop test, not a measurement.