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Fritters of Neudel
Make a pound of flour into nudel pastry, as already directed. Cut it into thin strips; boil one pint and a half of cream or new milk in a saucepan. Dissolve in it 6 ounces of fresh butter, add 1/4 of a pound of loaf sugar which has been well rubbed upon the rind of a large fresh lemon, and a pinch of salt. Drop the pastry into the boiling liquid, and simmer gently for three-quarters of an hour, until it has become a stiff paste. Take it from the fire, and when it is cool, stir briskly in with it the well-beaten yolks of 6 eggs. Spread it out on a large buttered baking-tin, about a quarter of an inch thick, and bake in a moderate oven; when brightly colored, take it out, divide it in halves, put one-half upon a large flat dish, spread some jam thickly over, place the other half upon it, pressing it lightly with the fingers, and when quite cold, stamp it in small shapes with an ordinary pastry-cutter. Serve neatly arranged on a napkin. These cakes should be prepared the day they are wanted for use, as they do not improve with keeping. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A rich baked noodle-pudding cut into small cakes, sandwiched with jam. Despite the name, nothing is fried; the finished sheet is stamped out like biscuits.
- The nudel pastryAn egg noodle dough made earlier in the book: flour worked with eggs and a pinch of salt to a stiff paste, rolled thin and cut into narrow strips. The exact proportions are given in that earlier direction, not here. Dried commercial egg noodles will not behave the same way, as they absorb liquid differently and stay firmer.
- Cool before the yolksThis is the hinge. The noodle paste must be genuinely cool, not merely off the boil, before the six beaten yolks go in, or they will set into threads and the sheet will bake grainy. Stir them in quickly and evenly.
- New milkMilk fresh from the cow, unskimmed. Whole milk is the direct substitute; cream gives the richer version the recipe offers as first choice.
- Loaf sugar and lemonLoaf sugar was sold in hard cones and broken up as needed. Use a lump or cube sugar so you can rub the lumps against the lemon zest, which draws the oil out of the peel; granulated sugar rubbed with finely grated zest achieves the same thing.
- OvenA moderate oven, in modern terms somewhere around 325-350F. Twenty minutes should colour the surface; the sheet is already cooked through, so you are only setting the eggs and browning the top.
- The long simmerThree-quarters of an hour over very low heat, stirred often. The noodles are meant to disintegrate into a thick, spoon-standing paste, so a heavy pan and patience matter more than the exact clock time; scorching at the bottom will taint the whole batch.
- Thickness and assemblyA quarter inch of paste on the tin is thin, so you will need a large tin, or more than one. Spread the jam while the baked sheet still has some warmth so it goes on evenly, then press and cool completely before stamping or the layers will slide.
- Yield and keepingEight to ten portions, giving perhaps two dozen small rounds depending on your cutter. The recipe's advice to make them the same day is worth following; it says only that they do not improve with keeping.
Nudel is simply the German for noodle, and this is one of a family of Central European sweet noodle dishes -- Nudelauflauf, Schmarren, the Austrian and Bohemian baked puddings of noodles, milk, butter and eggs. Nineteenth-century English-language household compilations drew freely on continental sources, often keeping a half-anglicised spelling (here the title reads Neudel and the text nudel). The technique of rubbing lump sugar against a lemon to capture the peel oil was standard practice before bottled extracts, and it appears constantly in period confectionery.