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Noodle Ring
3 eggs 3/4 cup milk...salt and pepper 1/2 cup grated cheese 3 cups cooked noodles Make custard of eggs and milk and season with salt and pepper, add 1/2 cup grated cheese. Mix with noodles and pour into well greased ring. Place ring in a pan of boiling water and bake 30 minutes. Serves 6.
A savory custard baked around noodles in a ring mold, set in a water bath so the eggs stay tender. The original gives no oven temperature, which was normal for the period; the water bath is what does most of the regulating.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none; a moderate oven, in the region of 325 to 350F, suits a custard of this kind. Too hot an oven risks curdling the custard even in a water bath, giving a weeping, grainy ring rather than a sliceable one.
- The water bath is the hingeThe pan of boiling water is not optional. Pour it to come halfway up the outside of the mold, and use boiling water so the bake starts on time rather than after twenty minutes of catching up.
- The moldA 1 1/2-quart ring mold, roughly 8 to 9 inches across, holds this comfortably. Grease it thoroughly, including the center tube, and a light dusting of fine dry crumbs makes unmolding more reliable.
- DonenessThirty minutes is a starting point. The ring is done when a knife slipped into the custard between the noodles comes out clean and the center barely quivers; a deeper mold may want 40 to 45 minutes.
- The noodlesCook them just to tender, on the firm side, and drain well. Three cups cooked is about 5 to 6 ounces dry medium egg noodles. Wet noodles thin the custard and it will not set cleanly.
- The cheeseA dry, sharp grating cheese does the most here: aged Cheddar, or Parmesan if you want it saltier. Season the custard assertively, since noodles and eggs both mute salt.
- Unmolding and servingLet it stand 5 to 10 minutes out of the water, run a thin knife around both edges, then invert onto a warm platter. Six servings as written, and the center is meant to be filled: creamed chicken, mushrooms, peas, or a tomato sauce.
Ring molds were a familiar fixture of American home cooking through the first half of the twentieth century. The appeal was practical as much as decorative: the hollow center cooked faster and more evenly than a solid loaf, and it gave the cook a built-in place to put a creamed dish, which stretched a small amount of chicken, ham or vegetables into a company dinner. Baking custards in a pan of water, the technique the French call a bain-marie, was already old kitchen practice by then; here it protects a mixture that is essentially an unsweetened baked custard with noodles suspended in it.