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Noodles
¼ t salt 1⅔ cups flour (about) ½ half eggshell water Put flour on baking board, make hole in center of flour and put in ingredients. Make a stiff dough, and if necessary, add more flour. Roll very thin, dry and cut. Drop in boiling salted water, boil 30 minutes. Drain. Brown cracker crumbs in butter and put over top just before serving. 1 C flour 14 t salt 1 T melted butter Mrs. A. M. Casey.
A church-supper noodle recipe set down in shorthand, with two overlapping ingredient lists and at least one omission. Read it as notes rather than a formula.
- The duplicated measurementsThe second ingredient list still reads "14 t salt," almost certainly a collapse of "¼ t salt." Flour and salt appear twice, which suggests two versions of the same dough were run together in setting; the simplest course is to work from the larger quantity, 1⅔ cups flour with ¼ teaspoon salt, borrowing the 1 tablespoon melted butter from the second list.
- The missing eggNo egg is listed, yet the water is measured in eggshells, which only makes sense if eggs have already gone into the well. For 1½ cups flour, two eggs plus the half-eggshell of water gives the stiff dough described.
- Half an eggshell as a measureA frugal improvised unit: the cook cracks the egg and uses the larger half as a scoop. Half a shell holds something on the order of 1 to 2 tablespoons.
- Rolling and drying"Roll very thin, dry and cut" means letting the sheet firm on a floured cloth or the back of a chair for 20 to 30 minutes until it is leathery but not brittle, then rolling it loosely and slicing across. Fully dried sheets crack instead of cutting cleanly.
- Thirty minutes is far too longThin fresh egg noodles are done in 3 to 5 minutes; even well-dried ones rarely need more than 8 to 10. Half an hour of boiling will turn them to paste. The long time presumably assumes a thicker, harder-dried noodle, and even then it is generous.
- The crumb toppingCracker crumbs browned in butter, scattered over just before serving, echoes the Central European habit of buttered crumbs on noodles and dumplings. Use about ½ cup crumbs to 2 tablespoons butter and add them at the last moment, or they soften.
- Yield1½ cups flour with two eggs makes roughly 3 cups of cooked noodles — a side dish for four.
The method here — flour heaped on the bare board, a well punched in the center, eggs and water dropped in — is the old European way of making pasta without a mixing bowl. Buttered crumbs over noodles is a hallmark of that kitchen, cousin to the browned breadcrumbs served over Bohemian dumplings and Austrian noodle dishes. Church cook books like this one were generally compiled by subscription, each contributor sending in a favorite from memory, which explains both the attribution to Mrs. A. M. Casey and the compressed, half-finished quality of the instructions.