Test by tearing one apart with a fork.  Serve at once, and serve with a roast, to be eaten with gravy, with butter, or they may be eaten as a dessert, with jelly or maple syrup.

Aunt Sarah frequently added an equal quantity of fine, dried bread crumbs and flour and a little extra salt to a thin batter of bread sponge (before all the flour required for bread had been added), made about as stiff a dough as for ordinary loaves of bread; molded them into balls.  When sufficiently raised, boiled them either in water or meat broth in the same manner as she prepared dumplings; made only of flour.

This is a small economy, using bread crumbs in place of flour, and these are delicious if prepared according to directions.  Remember to have a large quantity of rapidly boiling water in which to cook the dumplings, not to allow water to stop boiling an instant and to keep cook pot closely covered for 20 minutes before removing one, and breaking apart to see if cooked through.  These are particularly nice served with stewed apricots.

“LEBER KLOSE” OR LIVER DUMPLINGS

Boil a good-sized soup bone for several hours in plenty of water, to which add salt and pepper to taste and several small pieces of celery and sprigs of parsley to flavor stock.  Strain the broth or stock into a good-sized cook pot and set on stove to keep hot.

For the liver dumplings, scrape a half pound of raw beef liver with a knife, until fine and free from all veins, etc.  Place the scraped liver in a large bowl, cut three or four good-sized onions into dice, fry a light brown, in a pan containing 1 tablespoonful of lard and butter mixed.  Cut into dice 3/4 to a whole loaf of bread (about 2 quarts).  Beat 2 eggs together, add 1 cup of sweet milk, season well with salt and pepper, and mix all together with 1 large cup of flour.  If not moist enough to form into balls when mixed together, add more milk.  Keep the mixture as soft as possible or the dumplings will be heavy.  Flour the hands when shaping the balls, which should be the size of a shelled walnut.  Stand the pot containing stock on the front of the stove, where it will boil, and when boiling, drop in the dumplings and boil, uncovered, for 15 minutes.  When cooked, take the dumplings carefully from the stock on to a large platter, pour the stock over the dumplings and serve.

These are excellent, but a little troublesome to make.  One-half this quantity would serve a small family for lunch.

FRAU SCHMIDT’S “OLD RECIPE FOR SCHNITZ AND KNOPF”