By Liz Susman Karp and Natalie Gorlin, The Nosher

Last April, as the pandemic raged in my area, I opened my front door to my dear friend Natalie, who threw at me from a distance a plastic sandwich bag containing her family’s cherished Passover tradition: flädla.

Less commonly known than the universally beloved matzah ball, these Passover egg noodles are made from a thin crêpe that’s coiled and cut into strips, over which steaming broth is poured. Natalie’s family recipe was handed down from her mother’s Tante (aunt) Ilse, who émigrated from Germany in 1939 after Kristallnacht.

Ask around about flädla and, like the history of any good noodle, you’ll discover the topic covers a lot of ground. Flädla, also spelled flädle, didn’t start off as a Passover food but evolved into a dish that reflects the ingenuity and frugality of Jewish Eastern European cooks, who repurposed leftover dough or pancakes into noodles.

Noodles were a significant part of the Ashkenazi diet. In medieval times, Europeans began boiling dough in water rather than baking or frying it.

Holocaust survivor Cecile Gruer, 86, is known as her family’s chef. She movingly recalls eating flädla in 1946 at the first Passover she celebrated with her family in an Austrian displaced persons camp after they were reunited. Then a teen, she watched her mother prepare the noodle as her mother had done in Hungary. Gruer makes flädla year-round, using potato starch, matzah meal, or quinoa or almond flour for gluten-free relatives.

Sometimes she’ll just mix egg and water, essentially an omelette. Gruer suggests adding any herb, such as dill or cilantro, to heighten the soup’s flavor. She continues these traditions because, she says, “You do not want to break the chain.”

4 eggs, separated
¾ tsp. salt
¼-½ cup (to taste) chopped chives
4 Tbsp. potato starch
¼ cup of chicken broth
oil

1. Separate the eggs and add the salt to the yolks.

2. Mix chives and potato starch in with the egg yolks. Add as much chicken broth as is necessary for the mixture to be the consistency of pancake batter.

3. Beat egg whites until stiff and add to yolk mixture (mix occasionally while cooking batches to avoid separation).

4. Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan and add enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Fry like a crépe, and remove from pan. Lay flädla on paper towels to absorb any excess oil.

5. Let cool, then roll each crêpe and cut into thin strips. Flädla can be made a few days in advance and refrigerated.

6. Serve in hot soup and enjoy.

To read the complete April 2022 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.