No. 2970

Noodles a la Lauer

Nouilles a la Lauer

Mince fine one pound of noodle paste (No. 142), rolled out to a sixteenth of an inch in thickness; cook it in boiling water for a few moments, then drain; add to it salt, pepper, nutmeg, six ounces of butter, and four ounces of grated parmesan, also a little bechamel sauce (No. 409); mix all together and serve.

← No. 2969 Spaghetti Macaroni, Salvini Macaroni, Rice & Farinaceous No. 2971 Noodles, Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain buttered-noodle dish from Ranhofer's Delmonico kitchen, written for cooks who already had fresh noodle paste and bechamel on hand. The proportions are the whole point: this is very rich, and the sauce is a grace note rather than the body of the dish.

The hinge: keep the pasta barely cookedFresh noodles rolled to a sixteenth of an inch need one to two minutes in boiling salted water. "A few moments" is literal; drain them while they still have bite, since the butter and cheese finish softening them.
Noodle paste (No. 142)Ranhofer's noodle paste is an egg dough; check the book's own No. 142 for the exact proportions. Any good fresh egg pasta dough works; "mince fine" means cut the rolled sheet into narrow ribbons, not chop it.
Bechamel (No. 409)Period bechamel is a white roux loosened with milk, and some nineteenth-century versions also carry veal or chicken stock. A few tablespoons of a modern medium-thick bechamel is enough here.
Fat and cheese are not a typoSix ounces of butter and four ounces of Parmesan to one pound of pasta is about a stick and a half of butter per pound. That is authentic restaurant richness; halving the butter gives a lighter result if you want one.
ParmesanUse Parmigiano-Reggiano or a good grana, grated fine on the day. Pre-grated tub cheese carries anti-caking additives (usually cellulose, sometimes starch) that can make the sauce grainy.
Assembly temperatureToss the drained noodles with the butter off direct heat, then the cheese, then the bechamel. Cheese added to a pan over high flame will tighten and string.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield; at this richness a pound of noodles will stretch to roughly six as a side or four as a first course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) catalogues the repertoire of Delmonico's in New York, and its habit of naming dishes after patrons and performers is on display here. Several entries in this section carry such tags, including the Salvini macaroni that appears nearby in the sequence; the source of "a la Lauer" is not documented in the book itself. The dish belongs to the moment when Italian pasta was moving from immigrant kitchens into the grand French restaurant idiom of New York, and the treatment shows it: Italian noodles and Parmesan handled with butter and a French mother sauce, filed by Ranhofer among the "farinaceous" dishes rather than given a course of their own.