No. 2955

Gnocquis

Put into a saucepan two gills of water, adding an ounce of butter, salt and pepper; let come to a boil, then put in a quarter of a pound of flour and an ounce and a half of grated cheese; stir the preparation for two minutes on the fire and beat in quickly three eggs, one after the other. Dredge the table with flour, pour the paste on it, divide it into small bits and rolling each one out into a string on the table, cut them so as to obtain three-eighths of an inch in diameter balls, and poach these for five minutes in boiling milk. Put an ounce of butter into a saucepan, fill it with flour and moisten with the milk the gnocquis were boiled in, then add grated parmesan cheese and the gnocquis, stir well, heat the gnocquis thoroughly and serve. Gnocquis can also be made with semolina, also with chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) added to the same weight of cream cake paste (No. 132).

← No. 2954 Fondue with Piedmontese Truffles Macaroni, Rice & Farinaceous No. 2956 Gnocquis, Roman Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is pâte à choux dough — gnocchi à la parisienne — not the potato dumplings most people expect. The measures are straightforward once converted, but two lines in the original are garbled enough to need reading around.

The measuresTwo gills is one cup (240 ml) of water. A quarter pound of flour is 113 g, roughly 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons by scoop; weigh it if you can, since choux depends on the ratio. An ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, an ounce and a half of grated cheese about 1/3 to 1/2 cup depending on how finely it is grated.
The hingeBeat the flour into the boiling liquid all at once and dry the paste on the heat for the full two minutes, until it films the bottom of the pan. Underdried paste absorbs the eggs badly and the dumplings disintegrate in the poaching liquid.
Eggs one at a timeLet the paste cool for a minute or two before the first egg, and beat each one in completely before the next. Three eggs into 113 g of flour is a soft paste; if the third makes it slack enough to slump rather than hold a shape, hold part of it back.
Rolling the doughChoux paste is sticky rather than firm, so a heavily floured surface is not optional. Some cooks find it easier to pipe the paste from a plain tube directly over the pan and cut it off with a wet knife, which gives the same three-eighths-inch pieces.
Poaching in milkKeep the milk at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil — vigorous water breaks these dumplings up and milk scorches and foams over easily. Five minutes is about right; they float and firm when done. Poach in batches so they are not crowded.
"Fill it with flour"Read as an instruction to make a roux: melt the ounce of butter, stir in about an equal weight of flour, then moisten with the strained poaching milk to a light sauce. The original gives no quantity of flour here, and "fill" may be a literal rendering of the French or a printer's slip.
FinishingLater French practice often gratinates the assembled dish — sauced gnocchi in a buttered dish, more Parmesan on top, and a few minutes under a hot broiler or in a hot oven for colour. The original stops at heating through, which is also correct, just paler.
YieldMakes roughly 4 modest servings as a first course, or 2 to 3 as a main. The dumplings can be poached ahead, cooled in cold water, drained and held a day before saucing.
The variationsThe semolina version corresponds to the Roman style that follows as No. 2956, which would be semolina cooked to a porridge, spread, cooled and cut rather than a piped paste. The quenelle-and-choux mixture (No. 89 with an equal weight of No. 132) makes a lighter dumpling, offered here as an alternative.

A Little History

Ranhofer's spelling, gnocquis, is one of several nineteenth-century francophone renderings of the Italian gnocchi, though similar forms appear in Spanish as well. What he gives here is the version French cooks made their own — choux paste poached and then bound in a cheese sauce, later codified as gnocchi à la parisienne — while the semolina and potato forms sit alongside it as alternatives. Choux paste itself had been a staple of French pastry since at least the eighteenth century, and using it savoury, with Parmesan beaten in, was a straightforward extension of that repertoire. That The Epicurean (1894) files it among macaroni and rice reflects how Italian starches were then classified in American fine dining: not as a cuisine of their own but as a subsection of the farinaceous course.