Home › Vegetables › Macaroni as A Vegetable
Macaroni as A Vegetable
Throw into plenty of water one-half pound of macaroni, simmer until tender, being careful that the pieces are not broken; drain off all the water. Take the yolks of five and the whites of two eggs, half a pint of cream, white meat and ham chopped very fine, three spoonfuls of grated cheese ; season with salt and pepper, heat and stir constantly. Mix with the macaroni, put into a buttered mould and steam one hour.
This is a steamed macaroni timbale — a savoury custard bound with pasta and unmoulded at the table. The hinge is the custard: warm it gently and only until it thickens slightly, because if the eggs set in the pan you will be folding curds into the macaroni instead of a smooth binder.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup. Heavy cream gives the firmest set; half-and-half works but the mould will be softer and harder to turn out.
- Three spoonfuls of cheeseProbably tablespoons, though the recipe does not say. A hard grating cheese such as Parmesan is one reasonable reading of "grated cheese" here.
- White meat and hamCooked chicken or turkey breast, already roasted or poached, plus cooked ham; the recipe gives no quantity, so judge by eye — minced fine enough to suspend in the custard rather than sink. It reads as a dish for using up cold cooked meat.
- Pieces not brokenMacaroni of this period was commonly sold in long tubes, and the instruction not to break the pieces suggests the intact lengths mattered to the finished mould. With modern short elbows the dish still works but sets more like a pudding; cook to just tender, not soft, since it steams for another hour.
- Heat and stir constantlyThis is a stovetop custard. Keep it over low heat or a water bath and pull it as soon as it coats the spoon — around 170F. It should never approach a simmer.
- Steam one hourButter the mould well, fill it no more than three-quarters, cover tightly with a lid or foil, and set it on a rack in a covered pot with water partway up the sides at a bare simmer. It is done when the centre reads about 175F and feels firm to a light press.
- Turning outLet the mould stand five to ten minutes off the heat before inverting, or the outer custard will tear. Run a thin knife around the rim first.
- YieldServes four to six as a side or a light supper dish. A tomato sauce or a thin cream sauce poured around the base would suit it.
Filing macaroni under "Vegetables" looks odd now, but it was not unusual in American and English household books of the nineteenth century: macaroni often reached English-speaking tables as a side dish rather than a course of its own, and cookbooks sometimes slotted it in beside the potatoes and the stewed celery. The dish itself belongs to the fashion for moulded and steamed entrees of the later nineteenth century — timbales, chartreuses, and aspics that turned leftovers into something presentable. A cook with the remains of a chicken and a ham could bind them in an egg custard, steam the whole thing in a mould, and serve it as a made dish, which is the same economy that produced croquettes and scalloped dishes in books of this period. The heavy hand with egg yolks against only two whites may also be deliberate: yolks enrich and thicken, whites set firmer.