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Noodles (Egg tablespoon cream teaspoon)
1 egg 1 tablespoon cream 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup sifted flour Beat the egg with the salt. Add the cream, and beat again; then add the flour. Sufficient flour should be added to make a dough as stiff as can be kneaded. Roll this dough into a long, narrow strip, about one sixteenth of an inch thick. Sprinkle it with flour, and roll into a long roll, crosswise. Then with a sharp knife cut it into thin strips about one sixteenth of an inch wide. This may be used at once by putting it into the boiling soup twenty minutes before it is served; or it may be dried, and put away to be used as needed.
A plain egg noodle dough of the kind kept on hand for dropping into broth. The one thing worth changing is the cooking time.
- Twenty minutes is far too longFresh noodles rolled a sixteenth of an inch thick are done in 2 to 4 minutes in simmering soup; dried ones need 5 to 8. Twenty minutes will reduce them to paste and cloud the broth with starch.
- Flour quantity is a floor, not a totalOne cup is the starting point. A single egg with a tablespoon of cream will usually take 1 to 1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour before the dough stops sticking. Add it a spoonful at a time and stop while the dough is still firm and dry rather than crumbling.
- Rest the doughThe recipe moves straight from mixing to rolling. Ten to twenty minutes covered on the counter relaxes the gluten and makes the sheet far easier to take down to a sixteenth of an inch without it springing back.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream. Cream of this period was unhomogenized and its fat content varied by dairy and by grade; it was often richer than today's half-and-half, though thin cream was also sold. Whole milk works but may give a slightly tougher noodle.
- Rolling and cuttingFlour the sheet generously before rolling it up, or the coils will weld together. A pasta machine takes this dough well; use the finest cutter available, since the recipe asks for strips only a sixteenth of an inch wide, far narrower than a fettuccine cutter gives.
- Drying and storageSpread the cut strips loose on a towel or rack until they snap rather than bend, usually 12 to 24 hours in a dry room. Store airtight in a dry place; if they are dried through they keep for months, and freezing is a safe fallback if you are unsure.
- YieldAbout 6 ounces of noodles, enough to garnish 6 to 8 bowls of soup or to serve 2 to 3 as a dish on their own.