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Marrow Balls
salt, cayenne, nutmeg soft bread crumbs 4 tablespoons marrow 1 egg Cook marrow in frying pan, strain, beat, add egg, seasonings, and enough bread crumbs to make of a consistency to shape. Form in small balls and poach in hot water. 2 eggs 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon lard
A soup garnish rather than a dish in itself: small dumplings of beef marrow bound with egg and crumbs, poached and dropped into clear broth. The printed text is compressed and the trailing line of ingredients almost certainly belongs to the recipe that followed it on the page.
- The hinge: poach below a boilKeep the water at a bare shiver, well below bubbling, and slip the balls in until they float and firm. A rolling boil tears them apart and drives the marrow out as fat slicks.
- Getting the marrowAsk for beef marrow bones cut into 2-3 inch lengths; a pound of bones yields roughly the 4 tablespoons called for. Push the marrow out with a thumb or a knife handle after a short soak in cold water, which also draws out blood.
- "Cook marrow in frying pan, strain, beat"Melt it gently over low heat only until liquid and clear, strain out any membrane or bone splinter, then let it cool until it is opaque and the texture of soft butter before beating. Beating it while hot will scramble the egg when it goes in.
- The stray ingredientsThe "2 eggs, 1 teaspoon butter, 1 teaspoon lard" at the end does not fit the method, which names one egg and no fat. Treat the recipe as one egg, and disregard the trailing line.
- CrumbsSoft bread crumbs means fresh crumb torn or rubbed from a day-old loaf, not dried or packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid. Start with about half a cup and add until the mixture just holds a shape; too much crumb gives a heavy, bready ball.
- Seasoning proportionsFor this quantity, roughly half a teaspoon salt, a pinch of cayenne and a scant eighth teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. Poach one test ball first and taste before shaping the rest.
- Chill before shapingRefrigerate the mixture 20-30 minutes so the marrow sets. Wet hands, balls the size of a hazelnut; they swell a little as they cook.
- Yield and servingMakes about 16-20 small balls, enough to garnish six bowls of clear soup; add them to the hot broth at serving.
Marrow dumplings are a fixture of Central European soup cookery -- the Austrian and southern German Markklößchen -- and appear in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century, plausibly by way of German-American kitchens and the professional cooking-school tradition. Marrow was inexpensive and prized for richness in a period when butchers commonly had bones on hand.