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Fried Noodles
Beat 1 egg slightly, add 1/2 teaspoon salt and Flour enough to make a very stiff dough. Knead, toss on a floured cloth or board, roll as thin as possible, sprinkle with flour, fold in layers about 2 inches wide, slice very thin, shake strips apart, and fry until delicately brown in 1 pint salad oil. Drain on soft paper.
A one-egg noodle dough cut fine and deep-fried, of the sort served with chow mein or floated on a clear soup. The whole thing hinges on rolling the dough thin enough that the strips crisp through rather than puff.
- Flour quantity"Flour enough" for one egg and a half teaspoon of salt works out to roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of all-purpose flour, depending on the egg. The dough should be genuinely stiff and slightly dry, closer to pasta dough than biscuit dough.
- Rest the doughThe recipe omits it, but 20 to 30 minutes covered on the counter relaxes the gluten and makes a stiff dough of this kind far easier to roll thin. Without a rest it will spring back faster than you can work it.
- "Salad oil"In this period the term meant a neutral, mild-flavored oil suitable for the table, commonly olive or cottonseed. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point serves: peanut, canola, or refined sunflower.
- A pint of oilTwo cups, a shallow-fry depth in a small heavy pan. Frying temperature is not given; 350 to 365F browns the strips in well under a minute.
- Fry in small batchesNoodles dropped in a mass clump together and steam. Shake the strips loose, add a handful at a time, and lift them out the moment they turn pale gold, since they darken off the heat.
- "Soft paper"Meaning unglazed paper toweling or a brown paper bag. Paper towels are fine; drain in a single layer so the underside does not sit in oil and soften.
- Yield and keepingOne egg should make enough garnish for roughly four to six servings. Cooled completely, the noodles will keep a few days in an airtight tin and can be refreshed in a 300F oven for a few minutes.
This belongs to the wave of Americanized Chinese cooking that entered household cookbooks in the 1910s and 1920s, when chow mein and chop suey moved from restaurant menus in Chinese-American neighborhoods into the repertoire of hostesses looking for something novel to put before luncheon guests. Fried noodles were a standard accompaniment, either scattered over the dish or served as a crisp base, and the canned noodles now sold in supermarkets are a commercial descendant of the same idea. What is telling is how thoroughly the method is naturalized: the dough is a plain American egg-noodle dough of the kind used for chicken and noodles, simply cut finer and dropped in fat rather than broth. This page gives no soy sauce, no wok, no Chinese name for anything, which fits the way the cuisine was received in general-audience cookbooks of the period, borrowed as a serving idea and rebuilt from the pantry already on hand.