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Nouilles, Soup Of
Make half a pound of flour into nouilles dough as directed. Cut it into strips, and spread it on a sheet of paper in a warm place to dry. Take three pints of any nicely seasoned soup; put it on the fire, and when it is boiling, drop the nouilles gradually in with one hand, and with the other stir them gently with a wooden spoon, to keep them from getting into lumps. They will swell considerably in the liquid. Serve as hot as possible. Time to boil the nouilles, ten minutes. Probable cost of nouilles, 3d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A noodle garnish for clear soup, of the kind every 19th-century kitchen kept flour and egg yolks on hand for. The hinge is the drop: the strips must go in one at a time into liquid at a full boil, or they weld into a single mass.
- The dough it refers toThe nouilles dough given elsewhere in the book is flour worked with egg yolks and a pinch of salt into a very stiff paste, rolled thin and shredded into strips. Half a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups, and will take roughly four yolks; add water only by the teaspoon if the paste will not come together.
- MeasuresThree pints, imperial, is about 1.7 litres of finished soup. Weigh the flour rather than measuring it by volume — the dough wants to be dry and hard, and an extra ounce of flour matters more here than in most doughs.
- Drying on paperSpreading the cut strips in a warm place is not optional fussiness. Half-dried noodles hold their shape and do not stick to each other going into the pot; use a floured tray or rack and give them 30 minutes to an hour.
- The ten minutesThat timing assumes thick, well-dried strips. Fresh egg noodles rolled thin are done in 2 to 4 minutes — taste one at three. Ten minutes will give you soft, bloated noodles and a cloudy broth.
- Keeping the soup clearNouilles shed starch as they cook, which is fine in a broth meant to be a little thickened but ruinous in a consommé. For a clear soup, boil them separately in salted water, drain, and add them to the tureen before the soup goes in.
- "Any nicely seasoned soup"The nouilles are the garnish, and the recipe assumes you already have good stock. Season the broth fully before the noodles go in; they will absorb liquid as they swell and dull the seasoning.
- Cost and yieldThreepence for the noodles is a period price and tells you only that this was a cheap way to stretch a tureen. Six to seven servings is realistic as a first course.
Nouilles is simply the French for noodles, and its appearance in an English cookery dictionary reflects the long dominance of French professional vocabulary in Victorian kitchens — the same book gives quenelles, croûtes and julienne without apology. The word itself is generally traced to the German Nudel, which passed into Alsatian and then wider French use, and egg-noodle garnishes for broth remain a fixture of Alsatian and southern German cooking. What makes the entry characteristic of Cassell's is the economy: half a pound of flour and a few yolks, dried on a sheet of paper, turning three pints of any nicely seasoned soup into a course for seven. The stated cost in pence was part of the argument, not an afterthought.