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Macaroni, with Cheese
Throw into boiling water some macaroni, with salt, let it boil gently until a little more than half done, then drain off all the water, place the macaroni in a saucepan with just milk enough to cover it, boil till done. Butter a deep dish, sprinkle the bottom with grated cheese, then a thin layer of macaroni, little white pepper, plenty of butter, sprinkle on more cheese, cover them with a thin layer of bread crumbs, brown in a quick oven serve hot. •
A two-stage cooking method that is worth keeping: the macaroni finishes in milk rather than water, so the starch it sheds thickens the milk and does the work of a béchamel without one being made.
- The hinge: finish in milk, not waterBoil the pasta in salted water only until it is slightly past halfway — about 4 minutes for dried elbows or short tubes — then drain and cover with milk. The remaining cooking releases starch into the milk, which reduces to a light sauce clinging to the macaroni. Simmer gently and stir; milk scorches on a dry pan bottom.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400–450°F. Since everything in the dish is already cooked, this is a browning step only: 10–15 minutes, or until the crumbs colour and the edges bubble.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For a deep dish serving four to six, use 8 oz dried macaroni, about 2 cups milk for the second boil, 6–8 oz grated cheese, 2–3 tablespoons butter and half a cup of fresh breadcrumbs.
- The cheeseA firm, sharp cheddar or a dry grating cheese would suit a recipe of this kind. Anything that melts smoothly works; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch and can turn grainy, so grate from a block.
- White pepperProbably specified so no black flecks show in a pale dish. It is milder and slightly more musty than black pepper; black pepper tastes fine here if that is what you have.
- "Plenty of butter"Dot it over each layer rather than stirring it in. Combined with the starchy milk it enriches the dish as it heats, which may be why no flour-based sauce is called for.
- BreadcrumbsFresh crumbs from a day-old loaf brown better under high heat than fine dried crumbs, which can burn before the dish is hot through. Toss them with a little melted butter for even colour.
- LayeringCheese goes on the bottom of the buttered dish, where it browns beneath the macaroni. The recipe as written describes a single round of macaroni, pepper, butter and cheese before the crumb topping; further rounds can be built if the dish is deep.
Macaroni with cheese arrived in American cookery well before this book, carried in through English cookery writing of the eighteenth century, where boiled macaroni layered with cheese and browned before the fire appears in a handful of well-known examples, such as Raffald; tradition also holds that Thomas Jefferson served a version at Monticello after encountering pasta in Europe. Macaroni was still thought of as a foreign article, a side or a supper dish, not the main event. The instruction to finish the pasta in milk belongs to an older tradition than the flour-and-butter sauce most modern recipes use, and dried macaroni was by then widely available from American factories, cheap enough that a cookbook aimed at ordinary households could treat it as an everyday ingredient.