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Baden Noodles
(Germany.) Melt 6 ounces butter, and mix with it slowly the yolks of 2 eggs and 1 white. Stir until frothy, add salt and pepper, 5 ounces of flour, very slowly, then the yolks of 2 more eggs, well beaten. Drop in spoonfuls in boiling water, drain, when puffy,--about 10 minutes,--arrange neatly on a dish, dust with grated cheese, and bake till brown. Serve with a good sauce, or with some vegetable, artistically garnished.
This is a rich egg-and-butter dumpling batter in the southwest German Knöpfle tradition, poached and then gratinated. Two things decide whether it works: batter consistency and a gentle poach.
- The hinge: soften, don't meltThe hinge: consider softening rather than melting -- the original says to melt the butter, but fully melted butter and egg yolk are apt to loosen or separate rather than go frothy. Working the butter to a soft paste at room temperature and beating the yolks in gradually, as for a creamed batter, is the safer route.
- Weights in cups6 ounces butter is 1 1/2 sticks; 5 ounces flour is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons, spooned and levelled. The eggs total four yolks and one white, added in two stages.
- Batter consistencyThe original gives no liquid, so the result is a stiff, very rich paste. It should just fall from a spoon in a lump; if it will not leave the spoon at all, a spoonful or two of milk or the poaching water brings it right.
- Poach, do not boilWater at a hard boil tears these apart. Bring it to a boil, then drop the heat so the surface only shivers, and slide the spoonfuls in a few at a time.
- Ten minutes is for large dumplingsTablespoon-sized nockerl are done 4 to 6 minutes after they rise to the surface. The full ten minutes suits only generous, egg-sized spoonfuls; overcooked, they turn heavy and waterlogged.
- "Bake till brown"The original gives no oven heat. A hot oven, somewhere in the 400-425F range, for 10 to 15 minutes, or a few minutes under the broiler, will do it. The dumplings are already cooked, so this step is only for colour on the cheese.
- The cheeseAny firm grating cheese browns well here; Emmental or Gruyere is closest to the region, Parmesan sharper. Grate it fine so it melts before the dumplings dry out.
- Yield and servingAbout 16 to 20 dumplings, enough for four as a side dish. They stand up to a brown butter, a mushroom cream, or the pan juices of a roast.
Baden, in Germany's southwest corner, sits in the heartland of the flour-and-egg dumpling: Spatzle scraped from a board, Knopfle dropped by the spoon, Nockerl formed with a spoon. Batters of this kind are essentially cousins of the Alsatian and Swabian versions found on either side of the upper Rhine, and the finishing step here, dusting with grated cheese and browning in the oven, is the same logic as Kasspatzle. The proportions also mark the period: four yolks to one white and six ounces of butter for five ounces of flour is a recipe written when eggs and butter were the point of a dish, not something to be economised.