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Noodles with Parmesan Cheese
Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan placed on a hot stove, and when melted, mix in one and one-half ounces of flour, a little salt, a very little cayenne and a tea-cupful of milk. Work these to a firm paste and add three eggs and four ounces of grated Parmesan cheese. Have ready a saucepan of boiling water, take the preparation up in small quantities with a spoon, drop them in the boiling water and boil for a quarter of an hour. Take them out, drain, place them on a hot dish, garnish with a folded napkin or fancy dish-paper, and serve with a sauceboatful of rich brown sauce.
Despite the name, these are not noodles in any modern sense: the method is a cheese-flavoured choux paste poached in water, what a French kitchen would call gnocchi à la parisienne. A few of the instructions need translating.
- The hinge: cook the paste before the eggs go inMelt the butter, stir in the flour, add the milk and beat over heat until the mixture pulls away from the pan in a firm mass. Only then, off the heat and slightly cooled, beat in the eggs one at a time — added to a hot pan they scramble and the paste will not hold together in the water.
- A tea-cupfulPeriod teacups were not standardised: cookbooks of the era reckon one at anywhere from about 4 to 6 fluid ounces, so figure roughly ⅔ to ¾ cup of milk. Hold a little back: flours vary, and you want a paste stiff enough to hold its shape on the spoon.
- Weights, not cupsTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons, 1½ ounces of flour is about ⅓ cup, and 4 ounces of Parmesan is roughly 1¼ to 2 cups grated depending on how fine. Weigh the flour and cheese if you can — the ratio is what keeps the dumplings from dissolving.
- ParmesanUse real Parmigiano-Reggiano or a good grana, grated fine on a rasp. Pre-grated shaker cheese usually carries an anti-caking agent such as powdered cellulose, which can make the paste gritty and dull.
- A quarter of an hour is far too longChoux dumplings of spoon size are done in 4 to 6 minutes in water held at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil. They rise to the surface, swell, and firm up; fifteen minutes of hard boiling will burst them and leach out the cheese.
- ShapingTwo teaspoons dipped in the hot water make neat quenelles; work in batches so the pan is not crowded. Drain on a towel rather than in a colander, where they compress.
- Rich brown sauceIn this period the phrase would normally mean espagnole or demi-glace — a brown roux-based sauce built on veal or beef stock. A reduced, well-seasoned beef stock thickened lightly is the practical equivalent; ready-made demi-glace concentrate also works.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; this quantity will do roughly four as a first course or a side. The folded napkin under the dumplings would have absorbed water and dressed the platter; a warmed dish and a light gloss of butter does the same job now.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, and its kitchen was French in technique whatever the menus said in English. The dish itself belongs to the family of gnocchi à la parisienne — pâte à choux enriched with grated cheese and poached rather than baked — which is attested in French professional cookery of the late nineteenth century. Serving it with a sauceboat of brown sauce, rather than gratinéed under cheese as is more common today, is a mark of how thoroughly the classical sauce kitchen dominated an American grand hotel of the 1890s.