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Macaroni with Mushrooms
Take one pound of macaroni, break into small pieces and let it cook until tender; drop in with it a little salt. Put one-half cup of mushrooms (dried) to soak in a little water. When done, drain, then fry two or three slices of bacon, cut some onion fine and put with the gravy, and let it come to a light brown; remove from the fire and put in three small spoonsmall spoonfuls of chopped tomatoes, also the mushrooms, put on the stove and cook slowly twenty minutes. Grate some cheese on a platter, then put a layer of macaroni, then a layer mushrooms; alternate until ingredients are all used. Serve hot.
The text as printed is riddled with typesetting repeats — "let it gravy, and let it come to a light brown," "three small spoonsmall spoonfuls" — so read past the stutters. Underneath is a simple bacon-and-mushroom sauce layered with boiled macaroni and grated cheese.
- Soak the mushrooms firstThe dried mushrooms want soaking in warm water before anything else happens; start them before you put the pasta water on. The soaking liquid is worth keeping — a spoonful or two in the pan adds flavour — though the recipe's "drain" may refer to the macaroni rather than the mushrooms.
- "Gravy" means the bacon fatThere is no thickened sauce here. Fry two or three slices of bacon, leave the rendered fat in the pan, and cook the finely chopped onion in it until light brown. That fat plus the tomato and mushroom liquid is the whole sauce.
- The tomato quantity is vague"Three small spoonfuls of chopped tomatoes" is ambiguous — most likely three teaspoons of a fresh chopped tomato, used as a seasoning rather than a base. Half a cup of canned chopped tomato gives a recognisably similar dish if you want more sauce.
- Cook the macaroni shortOlder instructions to boil pasta "until tender" often meant softer than modern taste allows. Drain at the low end of the package time; the pasta sits hot under the sauce and cheese and continues to soften.
- The bacon itselfThe recipe never says what to do with the fried slices. Chop them and scatter them between the layers — otherwise you have cooked bacon for no reason.
- Cheese"Grate some cheese" is left unspecified. A firm yellow cheese such as a sharp cheddar suits the dish; Parmesan or pecorino works too.
- Assembly and heatThis is built on a warmed platter, not baked. Grate cheese onto the platter first so it melts against the hot dish, then alternate macaroni and mushroom mixture. Have everything hot and serve at once, or it goes tepid before it reaches the table.
- YieldA pound of macaroni feeds six as a main dish, eight as a side.
The bacon-and-onion base with a token amount of tomato reflects one way Italian-derived cooking appeared in mainstream American household books: the tomato is a seasoning measured in spoonfuls, not the foundation of a sauce, and the cheese is whatever hard cheese the household happened to keep. Macaroni was often grouped with the starchy vegetables rather than given a section of its own in English-language cookbooks of the period.