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Macaroni and Cheese
Put into a saucepan about half pound of macaroni, broken in pieces an inch in length, with water sufficient to boil tender, add a little salt; when done drain and put into a well-buttered dish in layers, with grated cheese sprinkled very liberally over each layer, using pepper, salt and butter. When the dish is full pour over one cup of sweet cream. Bake in a moderate oven about twenty-five minutes, and serve hot. Excellent.
A layered baked macaroni with no roux and no white sauce — the cream and the melting cheese are the sauce. A few notes on the period language and on making it work with modern pasta.
- Undercook the macaroniDried macaroni of the period generally took longer to cook than modern pasta, so "boil tender" should not be read as an instruction to cook it through. Modern macaroni should come out of the water a minute or two short of al dente, since it will absorb cream and keep cooking for 25 minutes in the oven.
- Moderate oven350F. The dish is already cooked through; the oven is only setting the cream and browning the top. If it has not taken colour by the end, a minute or two under the broiler finishes it.
- Sweet creamThis means fresh, unsoured cream, as distinct from the sour cream a kitchen of the period also kept on hand. Use heavy or whipping cream — anything lighter can break or stay watery under a long bake.
- Breaking the macaroniMacaroni was sold in long tubes, hence the instruction to break it into inch lengths. Modern elbow macaroni needs no cutting.
- The cheeseUnspecified; a firm aged Cheddar or a dry "American" cheese of the same type is the likeliest reading for a book of this date. Grate it yourself; pre-shredded cheese is coated with starch that keeps it from melting smoothly into the cream.
- Salt with a light handThe macaroni water is salted, then salt is added at every layer, then a liberal quantity of hard cheese goes on top of that. Season the layers barely at all and taste before the last one.
- Quantity and yieldHalf a pound of dry macaroni with a cup of cream serves four as a main dish or six as a side. Use a shallow dish rather than a deep one — the cream needs to reach the bottom layer, and a deep casserole leaves the top dry and the base swimming.
Baked macaroni with cheese was not new in 1906; it had been in English and American cookbooks for well over a century, appearing in English print in the later eighteenth century and in American print by the 1820s. The editor's note records that one of the book's eight macaroni recipes was served as a vegetable, steamed in a mould — macaroni was frequently understood as a starchy accompaniment rather than a dish in its own right, sitting alongside potatoes and rice on the table. The method here is also older than the roux-based sauce familiar today: layer, sprinkle, pour cream over, bake. That approach depends entirely on the quality of the cream and the cheese, which is why the compiler could sign it off with a single word — Excellent.