Homemade Noodles

Noodles became a specialty of the German settlers in Pennsylvania. They brought with them a taste for the dish. It was in the rich farmland of the mid-Atlantic area of the New World, however, that wheat flourished as it hadn’t in Europe. Here the people had access to wheat flour. Many farms also had their own flock of chickens and, thus, the eggs needed to make the rich dough. One Amish woman in her early 40s explains, “Having your own eggs makes it easier to make your own noodles and pot pie. A lot of the older people want noodles at the main meal each day because they used to make them weekly.” An older man agrees, “We always had homemade noodles. Some places today they don’t have any chickens—they have big dairies instead—so they have to buy their noodles.” In some families, noodlemaking had a seasonal aspect. One woman, born in the 1920s, recalls, “If we had a lot of eggs, we’d make a lot of noodles. In the spring, when the chickens were older, the egg shells weren’t as strong, so we’d have many ‘cracks.’ Then we’d mix up noodles, using the egg yolks. I would come home from school and see the noodles drying. I knew that somewhere there were egg whites, waiting to be made into chocolate angel food cake (see page 140)!” Today’s cooks need to weigh the matchless flavor of homemade noodles, yet the heavy time investment they require, against the inexpensive storebought noodles that are so easily had. In most Amish homes, made-from scratch noodles are a treat rather than a regularly served dish.