No. 330

Noodle Soup with Parmesan Cheese

Potage aux Nouilles au Parmesan

For the Paste.—Sift through a fine sieve, half a pound of flour, moisten it with four egg-yolks and one whole egg, adding a little salt and water; work well together and knead it till the paste is thoroughly well mixed, roll it down to one-sixteenth inch in thickness; let it dry in the open air; then fold it up, one inch and a half wide, and cut this into fine strips, dredging them over with flour, to prevent them sticking together; blanch them in boiling, salted water for one minute, then drain and put them into a saucepan with some consomme to simmer for five minutes; remove all the fat from the top, and serve in a soup tureen with come good consomme. Serve separately some grated parmesan cheese.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A plain egg-noodle soup from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen: fresh pasta cut by hand, blanched, then finished in clear consommé. Nearly everything depends on the quality of the broth.

The hinge: don't cook the noodles in the tureen brothRanhofer blanches the strips separately, then simmers them briefly in a little consommé and serves with fresh consommé over. That keeps the finished soup clear rather than starchy and clouded. Skipping the blanch is the one shortcut that ruins the dish.
Dough proportionsHalf a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups; four yolks and one whole egg is a rich, firm pasta dough. The "little water" is a few teaspoons at most — add it drop by drop, since the dough should be stiff enough to roll thin without tearing.
One-sixteenth inchThat is roughly 1.5 mm; on a hand-cranked machine that is a middle setting, though the numbering varies from machine to machine. Rolled by hand it takes real effort with a long pin; the dough wants to be well kneaded, and letting it rest before rolling helps stop it springing back.
"Let it dry in the open air"Only until the surface is leathery and no longer tacky — 10 to 20 minutes depending on the room. Dried through, the sheet cracks when folded instead of rolling up for cutting.
Blanching timeOne minute is correct for fresh noodles this thin, and the five minutes in consommé finishes them. Treating the noodles like dried pasta and boiling them eight minutes gives you a mush by the time they reach the table.
ConsomméThis is clarified beef or veal stock, not tinned broth. If you are not clarifying your own, use a well-made unsalted stock strained through a cloth and season it at the end; the soup has nowhere to hide.
"Remove all the fat from the top"Not fussiness — visible fat on a clear soup was considered a fault in this kitchen. Blot the surface with a strip of paper towel just before serving.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield, but the paste should make noodles for something like 6 to 8 first-course servings, depending on how much consomme you allow per person.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across some three decades (in two separate spells), published The Epicurean in 1894 as an encyclopedic record of the restaurant's repertoire, and the soup chapter alone runs to hundreds of numbered entries with garnishes rung through every plausible variation. "Nouilles" is generally derived from German Nudel, and noodles are usually said to have reached grand French cookery by way of Alsace and the German-speaking kitchens — a reminder that the classical repertoire Ranhofer worked in was less purely Parisian than its menu French suggests. Serving the grated Parmesan separately rather than stirred in appears to have been usual for clear soups of the period; it kept the consomme transparent, which was the whole point of having made one. Entries like this one, sandwiched between mutton hochepot and onion soup, show how a nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen built variety: a single well-made consomme, then dozens of garnishes to carry it.