In my never ending quest in search of the arcane and unusual, I stopped at a small diner on State Street in Hamburg (yes, Hamburg!), PA yesterday and looked over the list of daily specials. Having an affection for soup I noticed there were two on the board: Rivel and Doggie (hot dog).
I quizzed the waitress working the counter about the rivel soup, never having heard of it before. She said, "Let me bring you out a sample for you to taste." As she set a small cup in front of me she mentioned that it was something the locals there enjoy, a Pennsylvania Dutch concoction made from a sort of noodle dough dropped into steaming broth. It's about as frugal of a soup as you can make. Little bits of a dough composed of flour, egg and milk are dropped into scalding milk and form a sort of tiny dumpling, not even as big as a spaetzle noodle. Apparently it is a simple recipe that has been passed down for generations, beginning in Mennonite communities of a by-gone era when nothing was wasted or thrown out. While the derivation of the name is uncertain, some historians make the conjecture that rivel is a transliteration of the German reibele meaning something that is rubbed, as the dough is rubbed into little pieces by the cook's hands.
The broth can be flavored with various items and some rivel soups contain chicken, corn, potatoes, carrots, celery, even bacon, or any combination thereof. And some recipes include sugar, white or brown to sweeten it a bit.
But as I looked down into the sample in front of me I could see in the pale white soup only the small rivels; no spuds, chicken, corn or bits of bacon for flavor. It looked like lumpy wall paper paste and tasted about the same. Disappointed, I mentioned my assessment to the waitress. She agreed.
I ordered the other soup.
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