Spatzen and Spaetzle

[Peter Richardson]

Sorry, but I can't resist addressing the Great Spaetzle Question.

The dough for Spaetzle is pretty easy: flour and eggs, stirred into a
globby mass. Proportions: 10 eggs for each pound of flour. Some people
now use milk as well, but I'm afraid Oma would roll over in her grave at
the thought. She used to make the Spaetzle "vom Brett" with a knife; a
glob of runny dough is spooned onto a small hand-held cutting board, and a
knife is used to make little "worms" of dough that are flicked off into a
waiting pot of rapidly boiling water. I'll admit that I never did get the
hang of using a knife, but instead use a Spaetzlehobel, a rectangular
piece of metal looped over at the top so one can grab it. With a little
practice you can make about 3 "worms" per second, so the pot of water is
suddenly swimming with these irregular boiled noodles. When the surface of
the water is all a-swim, use a sieve to scoop out the Spaetzle, which can
then be kept warm in the oven or plunked directly onto waiting plates. We
make schwaebische Kaesespaetzle, which call for alternating layers of
diced Emmenthaler cheese and noodles, with a top layer of caramelized
onions (start cooking these first, allowing a slow but luscious 2 hours).
And we--i.e. my students and I, and Peter McGraw when he's willing--make
all this on a wood stove in a cabin in the Cascades.  They are required to
work the Spaetzlehobel--no Hobel, no noodles.

Some people (elsewhere) use a device (a Spaetzlemaschine--is it called a
potato shredder?) that squeezes the wormlets out, but we think that's
cheating. Our worms are husky, brawling little devils, fit for a meal.

But to get, finally, to the following question:
> Are "spatzen" and "spaetzle" the same thing?
Spatzen are indeed sparrows. A Spatz is also:
1. a sickly child
2. a girl
3. a pupil in the early grades
4. a fresh, cheeky little boy
5. a small portion of meat
6. a little boy's penis
7. a sexually proficient male
8. a fowl in general, especially one too small for a normal portion
9. a pilot
10. a person (usually a child) who eats very little
11. an inexperienced person
12. muscle pains

Aside from the diminutive suffix -lein, which eventually yields Spaetzle
in SW Germany, Spatz has Spaetzchen, a term of endearment for a girl or
woman. And the list of sayings involving Spatz wouldn't, as the Germans
say, fit onto a cow hide, so I'll stop here after acknowledging thanks to
the Pons Woerterbuch der deutschen Umgangssprache.

Peter Richardson