Sunday, April 10, 2011

Rivel Soup

Rivel soup appears to be a German-Menonite creation. Wikipedia, amazingly enough, did not have a definition for me, and their question software is too annoying to penetrate. However, there are many recipes for it on the internet, and the ones I looked at made mention of a German or Memonite origin. Rivels would be noodles if they had a shape. They are little bits of flour egg dough dropped into the soup. This is a tasty, easy soup to make, except the rivels need more than one egg yolk to be made into anything. Try two egg yolks, and then you may still need a little water.

Rivel Soup

1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk
8 cups boiling chicken broth
1 cup corn kernels (freshly cut from cob, it says. If not that time of year, use frozen)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the egg yolk and with the fingers work together until mixture is crumbly.
2. Add the crumbs, a few at a time, to the boiling broth. Add the corn, salt and pepper and boil ten servings. Makes six servings.

7 comments:

  1. I am fascinated by the word, "rivel", and also frustrated that I cannot find an origin for it. My guess is that it is a form of the German (Swabian dialect) word "reibele", which would mean something that is rubbed, but this is only conjecture.

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  2. Dear VirginiaGentleman,
    Thank you for your linguistic researches. This stuff is interesting, and information on it seems to be dying out as the people who made the dishes die out. Berkshire Farmer

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  3. Nice recipe that needs clarifications: it is spelled "Mennonite"; this is not a true German recipe, it is a Pennsylvania Dutch (anglicized from the word "Deutsche"; has nothing to do with Dutch, Holland, or the Netherlands): as the Pennsylvania Dutch migrated west, the recipe slightly morphed in Pennsylvania Dutch communities in Pennsylvania vs. Ohio vs. Indiana; my grandmother taught us to make the rivels by rubbing the mixture in our hands (like you warm your bare hands on a cold morning) together over the soup pot (it was never pinched); Pennsylvania Dutch is like Yiddish in that many words are a jumble of slang/German: so the origin of the word from "rubbed" is correct

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  4. My mother described it crudely as similar to the shape formed by rubbing sweaty, dirty skin on your arm. :D

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  5. My family's version doesn't use broth. Instead, the rivels are cooked in milk and served with milk and sugar. I was almost 30 before I discovered the vegetable soup version!

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  6. I eat schnitz & knepp the same way, with milk & sugar.

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  7. My grandmother used to make a rivel soup with meat in it.

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