Spatzen and Spaetzle

[A. Maberry]

Peter,

I don't recall having Spaetzle very often--usually on some special
occasion. However, I remember having soup with rivels, which are, I think,
made from the same ingredients as Spaetzle, i.e. flour, eggs and a little
salt. The soup was always made with the broth of a brisket that had been
boiled to death the day before and had finely minced onion, carrot,
leftover brisket, rice, salt, a great deal of black pepper and rivels. Are
rivels common in all German and German-American cooking or are they a
regional specialty (if such a term can be applied) in Germany?

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu

On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, Peter Richardson wrote:

> 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
>