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Marrow Balls
1 tablespoon finely cut marrow 3 tablespoons fine stale bread crumbs 1 teaspoon chopped parsley 1 teaspoon beaten egg salt and pepper Mix ingredients and work to a smooth paste, form in balls the size of a filbert, drop into hot soup and cook for 10 minutes.
A single-tablespoon batch of German-style marrow dumplings, meant as a garnish for one bowl of clear broth. The quantities are tiny and precise because this is sickroom cookery, scaled for a person with little appetite.
- MarrowAsk the butcher for beef marrow bones cut into 2-3 inch lengths, or split. The marrow scoops out easily if the bones sit in cold water for an hour, and it chops best when cold and firm rather than at room temperature.
- "The size of a filbert"A filbert is a hazelnut, so roughly half- to three-quarter-inch balls. Keeping them small helps them cook through in the 10 minutes given.
- Beaten egg by the teaspoonBeat one whole egg, measure out a teaspoon, and keep the rest for something else. If you scale the recipe up, hold to the same ratio rather than adding a whole egg, which makes the mixture slack and the balls fall apart.
- Bread crumbsFine dry crumbs from stale white bread, not coarse fresh crumbs and not seasoned packaged crumbs. If the paste will not hold together, add crumbs a pinch at a time; if it cracks, a few drops of broth.
- Simmer, do not boilThis is the hinge. Drop the balls into broth held at a bare simmer, barely moving. A rolling boil breaks them open and clouds the soup with fat and crumbs.
- Test one firstPoach a single ball before shaping the rest. If it disintegrates, work in more crumbs; if it is dense and heavy, a little more marrow softens the texture.
- YieldEnough small balls to garnish a bowl of consomme or beef broth. The paste can be mixed and chilled a few hours ahead, which also makes it easier to roll.
Marrow balls are the American cookbook name for Markklößchen, the marrow dumplings served in clear beef broth in Germany and Austria. Marrow was regarded as a concentrated, easily assimilated nourishment, and a clear broth with a few small dumplings was thought to deliver strength without taxing the digestion. The scale is small: a tablespoon of marrow and a teaspoon of egg makes a garnish for a single bowl rather than a dish for the family table. Marrow bones were inexpensive at the time, so the dish cost little beyond the trouble of chopping.