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Nudels
Although made of the same kind of paste as the noodles, the peculiarity of these according to German ideas is that they are cut into shreds or thin strips. Mix in a basin one teaspoonful of salt with one-half pound of flour, then mix in four beaten eggs and work the dough until smooth. Dredge flour over a paste-board, place the dough on it and knead well. Roll the dough very thin and then twist it up like a rolled jelly-cake, cut half the roll into strips one-half inch thick and the other into strips one-fourth inch thick, place the wider strips of paste in a saucepan of boiling water and boil for fifteen minutes. Put one-fourth pound of butter into a flat stewpan, and when blue smoke arises, throw in the narrow strips of paste and fry till lightly browned. Turn the boiled strips of paste, when done, on a sieve, drain and lay on a hot dish on which has been placed a folded napkin or an ornamental dish-paper. Next, drain the other strips as free from fat as possible and pile on the top of the boiled ones. Strew powdered sugar over them, and serve with cream.
Dampf-Nudels, Polish Style Put one and one-half pounds of dampf-nudel paste and set it in a warm place to rise. Then turn out on a floured board and work it well with the hands for a few minutes; let it get quite cold, roll out very thin and with a small tin cutter, cut it into rounds. Have prepared some apple marmalade reduced and mixed with rum, put a little of this on each round, fold over the paste and turn them upside down on a buttered baking-sheet. Place where they will keep warm for forty-five minutes to rise, then brush them over with warm butter, put them with the baking-sheet into a moderate oven and bake until done. Remove the baking-sheet, dredge a little fine sugar over them, glaze slightly, lay a napkin over a dish and place them on in a pyramidal form, and serve.
Two dishes run together here: a sweet noodle dish of half-boiled, half-fried egg pasta, and a yeasted filled dumpling baked rather than steamed. The first is straightforward once the boiling time is corrected; the second depends on a dough recipe given elsewhere in the book.
- The boiling time is the thing to fixFifteen minutes will reduce thin fresh egg noodles to mush. Rolled very thin and cut half an inch wide, they need 2 to 4 minutes in well-salted boiling water — taste one rather than watch the clock.
- Weights and proportionsHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups; four whole eggs to that weight makes a rich, deep-yellow dough closer to Bavarian Nudeln than to modern dried pasta. Expect a stiff dough that needs a good ten minutes of kneading and a 30-minute rest before it will roll thin without springing back.
- "Blue smoke" and a quarter pound of butterWhole butter that smokes blue has already burned. Use clarified butter or ghee for the fried strips, and less of it than 4 ounces unless you want them swimming; a shallow film in a wide pan browns them evenly.
- Fry the narrow strips separately and brieflyThe quarter-inch strips go into the fat raw, not boiled, so they crisp rather than soften. They colour in a minute or two and go bitter quickly after that.
- Dampf-nudel pasteThis is a sweet yeast-raised dough, essentially an enriched bread dough, which the recipe assumes has already been made up and is rising. Any soft brioche-style or sweet milk-bread dough of about 1 1/2 lb will behave the same way.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in this period is generally taken as somewhere around 350-375F. At that heat these small filled rounds should need roughly 20 to 25 minutes; "glaze slightly" means a brief pass under high heat or a broiler to melt and colour the dusted sugar.
- Reduced apple marmaladeOrdinary apple butter or a thick apple sauce cooked down until it mounds on the spoon works; anything looser will burst the seams. Add the rum after reducing so it is not all driven off.
- Yield and servingThe noodle dish will serve about four as a dessert. The napkin or dish-paper under it helps absorb fat and moisture, though the recipe's own "ornamental dish-paper" shows presentation was part of the point; a wire rack over a warm plate drains better.
Oscar's distinction between "noodles" and "Nudels" is a matter of cut rather than substance, and he says so: same egg paste, but shredded into fine strips in the German manner. Sweet noodles with butter, sugar and cream belong to the Central European tradition of Schmarrn and Nudelauflauf, where pasta sits comfortably on the dessert side of the menu — a habit that found much less purchase in Anglo-American cooking, where noodles arrived attached to soup and chicken. Dampfnudeln are properly steamed dumplings (Dampf is steam), cooked covered in a little milk or butter so the bottoms crust while the tops stay pale; calling a baked, filled, jam-stuffed version "Polish style" reflects the loose regional labelling of late-nineteenth-century hotel kitchens more than any documented Polish original. Oscar Tschirky himself was Swiss — the book's French menu language sits on top of a distinctly German-inflected working repertoire.