1 cup flour for each egg
Salt

Optional
Water (instead of eggs for economical reasons)
Left-over egg whites

"The best and most tender pasta is made simply of eggs and flour and salt. Water may be substituted for part of the eggs, for economy, or when a less rich pasta is needed. Allow about a cup of flour to an egg. Put the flour on a bread board, make a hole in the middle and break in the egg. Use any extra whites that are on hand. Work it with a fork until it is firm enough to work with the hands. Knead it thoroughly, adding more flour if necessary, until you have a paste you can roll out. Roll it as thin as a ten cent piece. If the sheet of pasta is too large to handle with an ordinary rolling pin, a broom handle which has been sawed off, scrubbed and sandpapered, will serve in lieu of the long Italian rolling pin. This pasta may be cut in ribbons to be cooked in soup as tagliatelli, or cut in squares or circles and filled with various mixtures to make cappelletti, ravioli, etc. Any bits that are left or become too dry to work may be made into a ball and kept for some time to grated into soup, in which it makes an excellent thickening."

This recipe was taken from "Practical Italian Recipes, sold for the Benefit of Italian War Orphans," by Julia Lovejoy Cuniberti. It was published in Washington, D.C. in 1918. For the entire copyright-free cookbook see www.archive.org.... P.S. I have to admit I agree with Cuniberti -- "The best and most tender pasta is made simply of eggs and flour and salt." This is how my own mother made her pasta noodles for lasagna and cannelloni in Canada for the past 50 years. She never added water to moisten the dough -- always an extra egg. However, when she was growing up in Molise in the 1930s, because eggs were expensive, few home cooks had that that luxury. Photo and notes: Mary Melfi.

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