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How to Prepare the Noodle Paste
One pound sifted flour, five whole raw eggs, two saltspoons salt, two tablespoons cold milk. Place the flour on a table; make a small fountain in the centre; crack the five eggs into the fountain; add the milk and salt, then carefully and briskly knead the whole until a firm paste. Roll it up to a ball shape, then flatten to a cake form and let rest for ten minutes. Then roll out to half inch in thickness; let rest for five minutes; then roll out again to the thickness of a sheet of paper and let rest again for five minutes. Cut the paste in two equal parts. Roll out each half evenly to a cigar shape, but without tapering the ends, leaving them straight at both ends. Then carefully slice the paste into very thin slices. Place the noodles in a piece of paper and let get dry for fifteen minutes, when they will be ready for use.
A straightforward egg-and-flour pasta dough, written for a cook working with a rolling pin on a bare table. Two things need translating: the volumes, and the rests, which are the whole point of the method.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of salt. That is modest for a pound of flour; a full teaspoon is closer to modern taste, especially if the noodles go into a plain broth.
- A pound of flourWeigh it rather than measure it. A pound of sifted all-purpose flour is roughly 4 cups, but cup measurements of sifted flour vary a good deal depending on how it is scooped, which is enough to turn a firm paste into a sticky one.
- Egg sizeFive eggs to a pound of flour is a rich dough by any standard. Eggs were not graded to modern sizes when this was written and could run smaller than today's large egg, so with modern eggs the dough may come together wetter than intended. Hold back the two tablespoons of milk until you see whether the flour needs them.
- The rests are the recipeTen minutes, then five, then five: each pause lets the gluten relax so the next rolling does not spring back. Skipping them is the usual reason hand-rolled pasta refuses to thin out. Keep the dough covered or under an inverted bowl so the surface does not skin over.
- "Thin as a sheet of paper"That is the target for cut noodles, and it is achievable by hand on a large surface with a long pin. On a pasta machine it corresponds roughly to the second-thinnest setting; take it in stages rather than jumping.
- The cigar shapeThis most likely means the rolled-up sheet, loosely coiled into an even log with square ends so every slice is the same width. Flour the sheet well before rolling it or the coils will fuse. Slicing across the log and shaking the ribbons loose gives you narrow ribbon noodles.
- Drying and cookingFifteen minutes on paper dries the surface just enough that the noodles do not stick to each other; it does not preserve them. Fresh noodles at this thickness cook in two to three minutes in well-salted boiling water, not the eight to ten a dried box would want.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 pounds of dough, enough for six as a first course or four as a main, and a good deal of it if the noodles are going into soup.
Egg noodles of this kind sit at the crossing point of two traditions this book draws on freely: the Italian pasta all'uovo made with a well of eggs in a mound of flour, and the German and Austrian Nudeln that arrived in American kitchens with central European cooks and ended up in chicken soup and in casseroles. The well-in-the-flour method described here, working directly on the tabletop rather than in a bowl, is a professional habit that persists because a wooden or marble surface gives the heel of the hand something to work against. Note that the recipe assumes noodles are something a household makes rather than buys. Commercially dried pasta was available in American cities by this period, largely imported or made by immigrant manufacturers, but a cook who wanted a rich five-egg noodle still rolled it out.