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Gnocchi
(Italian savory fritters.) Chop 1/2 pound of the white meat of cold cooked chicken very fine, make an equal amount of paste, such as used for eclairs and cream puffs (no sugar.), chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and onion juice, also a tablespoonful of grated cheese. Take this, well mixed, in large spoonfuls and poach them in boiling broth, drain them, arrange on a dish in a neat pile, cover with grated cheese, and bake until brown. Serve with tomato sauce.
This is not potato gnocchi but a choux-paste dumpling enriched with minced chicken — closer to what the French call gnocchi à la parisienne. The paste is the whole recipe, so get it right and the rest follows.
- The paste"Paste such as used for eclairs" is p e à choux: bring 1/2 cup water with 4 tablespoons butter and a good pinch of salt to a boil, beat in 1/2 cup flour until it forms a ball, then beat in 2 eggs one at a time. That makes somewhat more than the half pound the recipe wants set against the chicken, so scale down or hold back the surplus. Omit sugar, as the recipe says. It should be stiff enough to hold a spoon's shape.
- Poach, do not boilBroth at a hard boil will tear the dumplings apart. Bring it to a bare simmer, drop the spoonfuls in, and hold them there 10 to 12 minutes until they puff and float firmly; they collapse if underdone in the centre.
- Work in batchesThe dumplings roughly double in size. Poach six or eight at a time in a wide pan so they are not crowded, and lift them out with a slotted spoon onto a towel to drain.
- Onion juiceA period ingredient with no modern shelf equivalent. Grate half an onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve; a teaspoon of the liquid is enough for this quantity.
- Grated cheeseParmesan is the likely intent, though the book says only "grated cheese." The recipe specifies a tablespoonful in the mixture; allow roughly 1/3 cup more for the top. Pre-grated cheese in a tub browns poorly; grate it yourself.
- Oven for browningThe book gives no temperature and asks only that the dish brown. A hot oven, around 425F for 12 to 15 minutes, or 3 to 4 minutes under a broiler, will leave the cheese spotted brown and bubbling.
- Butter the dishNo fat is mentioned, but the drained dumplings will stick. Butter the baking dish and add a spoonful of the poaching broth to keep them from drying out.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 dumplings — four servings as a light main course with tomato sauce, six as a side or first course.
Nineteenth-century English and American cookbooks used "gnocchi" loosely for almost any small Italian or Italianate dumpling; the potato version now taken as standard was still largely a regional Northern Italian dish and had made little impression in English-language print. What is described here belongs to the semolina-or-choux family, and specifically the choux branch usually associated with French professional practice rather than with any Italian home table — poached, layered with Parmesan, and glazed in the oven. The chicken suggests a leftovers dish dressed as a foreign speciality: half a pound of cold white meat and a flour-and-egg paste turn Sunday's roast into Monday's dinner.