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Pinch of Salt
A little Water.
Quarter of a pound of sifted Flour. One Egg. Form a hole in centre of the flour, sprinkle in half a teaspoonful of salt. Break the egg in the hole, and work it with a little water vigorously with the palm of your hand until a smooth ball is formed; fold it in a cloth and let it remain for an hour. If the paste is too dry, add a few drops more water; but the paste must be stiff. Roll out the paste very thin, flour well, fold longways, cut into very narrow and small strips, shake them up, let them rest covered over for a little while, boil in salted water, strain and drain, and serve in consommé.
This is fresh egg noodle paste for garnishing clear soup — what French kitchens of the period called nouilles. The printed ingredient list has been clipped, so the flour and egg quantities have to be reconstructed from the method.
- The missing quantitiesThe text names only salt, water and "the egg", so the flour weight is genuinely absent from the page. A common working ratio for this style of paste is one whole egg to roughly 3.5 oz (100 g) of plain flour, which should give a couple of soup portions.
- Stiff means stiffThis is the hinge. Pasta dough for soup garnish should be noticeably harder than bread or pastry dough — barely tacky, almost crumbly at first. A slack dough will not roll thin without tearing and the strips will swell and cloud the consommé.
- Working it with the palmKneading with the heel of the hand for eight to ten minutes develops the gluten that lets the paste take a very thin roll. A food processor will bring it together, but finish by hand.
- The hour's restNot optional. The wrapped rest relaxes the gluten so the dough stops springing back. A damp cloth or plastic wrap both work; keep it at room temperature.
- Rolling and cutting"Very thin" here means as thin as the dough will take — roughly 1 mm or less, around the second-finest setting on a pasta machine. Flour the sheet generously before folding, or the layers weld together and the strips will not shake loose.
- Cooking timeFresh noodles this thin need only a minute or two in well-salted boiling water. Drain, and if they are not going straight into the soup, toss with a drop of oil.
- ServingAdd the drained noodles to hot consommé at the last moment rather than cooking them in it — the starch they shed will turn a clear soup cloudy. Allow a small handful per bowl; the garnish should not crowd the broth.
Egg noodles cut fine and dropped into clear broth run through nineteenth-century European cookery under several names — nouilles in French kitchens, Nudeln in German and Austrian ones, from which the French word is generally traced. Recipes of this kind reflect the dominance of French professional practice in grand houses and hotels of the period, where a consommé was judged on its clarity and on the neatness of the garnish suspended in it: julienne of vegetable, royale custard, profiteroles, or noodles cut as narrow as the cook's knife allowed. The instruction to work the paste with the palm of the hand and rest it in a cloth is the older hand method, and it survives in modern fresh pasta making.