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Baked Noodles
Boil a sufficient quantity of noodles in water, drain thoroughly, and put them in a stewpan with enough cold milk to cover; two ounces of butter, about four ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and pepper and grated nutmeg to taste. Toss the noodles over the fire for several minutes, then pile them on a hot dish, strew plenty of grated bread-crumb over, and brown them in a brisk oven. Serve very hot.
A plain gratin of noodles that depends entirely on how far you reduce the milk before it goes into the oven. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: reduce, don't drownThe milk is there to be cooked away, not to make a sauce. Toss the drained noodles over medium heat until the milk has thickened to a glaze that coats them and no liquid pools in the pan. Piled into the dish while still soupy, they bake into a wet, separated mess.
- Brisk oven425-450F. The dish is already hot and fully cooked; the oven is only browning the crumb, which takes 8-12 minutes. Watch it rather than timing it.
- NoodlesBroad flat egg noodles are the likely intention, though the recipe says only 'noodles'. Boil them in well-salted water and stop a minute short of tender, since they will take on more milk in the pan.
- Weights into cupsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Four ounces of grated Parmesan is roughly 1 1/3 cups finely grated; coarsely grated on the large holes it will measure somewhat more, since the shreds pack less tightly.
- SaltNo salt is called for, and four ounces of Parmesan does carry a good deal on its own. Taste in the pan before it goes into the dish and correct then.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and keep it to about a quarter teaspoon for a pound of noodles. Pre-ground nutmeg is flat and needs more to register, which is the wrong trade.
- CrumbsCoarse dry crumbs, which is what 'grated bread-crumb' implies, brown best. Toss them with a little melted butter and they will colour evenly instead of going pale in patches.
- Quantity and yield"A sufficient quantity" is the only measure given. One pound of dry noodles suits the butter and cheese here and serves six as a side, four as a supper dish.
Baked noodles with Parmesan and nutmeg turn up on both sides of the late nineteenth-century hotel repertoire -- as Nudelauflauf in German and Austrian kitchens and as a plain baked pasta al forno in Italian ones -- though the dish is too widespread to assign to one tradition. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, was Swiss-born and moved easily between those traditions, and the dish is the kind a hotel kitchen could produce quickly from what was already cooked and on hand. Nutmeg with milk and cheese is an old pairing, generally traced to the medieval and Renaissance habit of spicing dairy dishes. The instruction to "toss the noodles over the fire" is a reminder that this was written for a range top where a cook judged heat by feel rather than by a dial.