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Soup with Noques
Put four ounces of butter into a stewpan to melt, add four or five ounces of flour and stir it over the fire until nicely browned. Pour in gradually with the flour three quarts of rich broth, continue stirring over the fire until the broth boils, then move the stewpan slightly to the side of the fire. Warm one-half pound of butter in a basin and work it with a spoon until creamy, then mix with it, one at a time, the yolks of five eggs and the whites of two. Beat the butter and eggs until light and frothy, then sift in slowly six ounces of flour, work the whole to a smooth paste, season it with nutmeg and salt and add the whipped whites of two more eggs. Try the consistency of the above mixture by poaching a small quantity of it in boiling water, stir in a little flour, if too light, and if too thick then stir in a little butter. Divide the mixture into small equal portions and shape them into round balls. Drop the noques into a saucepan of boiling salted water, give them one boil up, then move the pan to the side of the fire and boil again until firm. Beat the yolks of four eggs with a little cream, skim the fat off the soup, put in the beaten eggs and stir them by the fire till thick. The soup should not boil after the eggs are added. Drain the noques, put them into a soup tureen, strain the soup over them through a fine hair sieve and serve at once.
A brown-roux broth finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, served over butter dumplings. Two separate cooking problems, both of them about heat control.
- The hinge: never boil after the eggs go inOnce the beaten yolks and cream are stirred in, the soup must stay below a simmer — roughly 160-180F. A single boil scrambles the yolks and leaves grainy threads that no sieve will fully rescue. Temper first by whisking a ladle of hot broth into the eggs, then return the mixture to the pan off direct heat.
- "Move to the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant a gentle, barely-trembling heat. On a modern burner, low, or pull the pan half off the element. The dumplings likewise want a bare simmer, not the rolling boil they are dropped into.
- Weights to volumeFour ounces of butter is one stick; half a pound is two. Six ounces of flour is about 1 1/3 cups, and the 4-5 ounces for the roux is roughly 1 cup. Weigh the flour if you can — the test-poach below depends on getting it close.
- The test poach is not optionalEgg-and-butter dumpling batter varies with egg size and flour absorption. Poach one teaspoonful in simmering water: if it disintegrates or spreads, work in more flour; if it is dense and heavy, more soft butter. Adjust before shaping the rest.
- Shaping and cooking the noquesThe batter is soft, so shape with two wet spoons or a small scoop rather than trying to roll true balls by hand. Keep them small — walnut size — and give them 8 to 12 minutes at a low simmer until firm through, then lift out and drain.
- Vessels and equipmentA stewpan is a wide, heavy saucepan; a basin is a mixing bowl. A fine hair sieve was horsehair mesh — a fine-mesh strainer or a chinois does the same work of catching any strands of set egg.
- Roux colourBrowning the flour in butter to a nut colour takes 10 to 15 minutes of steady stirring over medium heat and gives the soup its colour and flavour. Stop while it smells toasted; scorched roux turns bitter and thickens poorly.
- YieldThree quarts of finished soup serves ten to twelve as a first course. The dumpling batter is very rich in butter by modern standards; a half batch of noques is plenty if you are scaling the soup down.
Noques is the French spelling of the German-Austrian Nockerl (and appears related to Hungarian nokedli and Alsatian Knepfle) — a soft, spoon-shaped dumpling of egg, butter and flour dropped into simmering liquid. Such dumplings reached American hotel kitchens by way of the classical French repertoire, which absorbed a good deal of Alsatian and Viennese cookery in the nineteenth century. The double thickening here — roux for body, yolks for velvet — is characteristic of the period's soups, when a potage lié was judged on smoothness above all, hence the instruction to strain everything through a hair sieve at the last moment before it reaches the tureen.