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Macaroni, with Oysters
Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender, then draw through a colander; take a deep earthen dish, using first macaroni, then oysters, alternating in this way until the dish is nearly filled. Sprinkle each layer of macaroni with grated cheese before putting on the oysters. Bake until brown. This makes a very nice dish.
A layered bake given without quantities, times or temperature, which was normal for a book that assumed a cook already knew what a macaroni dish looked like. The two things it leaves out are liquid and heat, and both matter.
- ProportionsA workable reading is 8 oz dry macaroni to 1 pint shucked oysters and about 6 oz grated cheese, which fills a 2-quart dish and serves four to six. Nineteenth-century macaroni came in long tubes to be broken up; elbows or ziti behave the same way here.
- Undercook the pasta"Until tender" was written for macaroni that was usually boiled long and soft, and which may not behave like today's dried semolina. Boil it a couple of minutes short of the package time, since it will keep absorbing liquid in the oven.
- "Draw through a colander"Simply drain. Some period recipes then rinse in cold water to stop the cooking; that is worth doing if the dish will sit before baking.
- Add liquidThe recipe supplies none, and cheese plus drained macaroni plus oysters will bake dry. Reserve the oyster liquor and pour it over, or use about a cup of milk or thin cream; a few dabs of butter on each layer is in keeping with the period.
- The dish itselfA "deep earthen dish" is a glazed earthenware or stoneware baking dish. Any 2-quart casserole works, though a heavy ceramic one holds heat more evenly and browns the top better.
- Oven and timeBake at 375F for 25 to 30 minutes, until bubbling at the edges and browned on top. "Bake until brown" in an unregulated range meant whatever the oven was doing; the number is the safer guide.
- Don't overbake the oystersOysters are cooked as soon as the edges ruffle, a matter of two or three minutes at temperature. Long baking shrinks them to rubber, so keep them in the middle layers where the heat reaches them last, and pull the dish as soon as the top colours.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in American recipes of this period usually meant a dry aged Cheddar, with Parmesan turning up for a sharper finish. Avoid pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch, which goes grainy over the oyster liquor.
- BrowningIf the top is pale when the inside is hot, scatter buttered breadcrumbs over it and give it two minutes under the broiler rather than more time in the oven.
Macaroni is often found in the vegetable chapter of nineteenth-century American cookbooks, filed with the starches rather than treated as a dish in its own right, and it was commonly baked with cheese in the English manner rather than sauced in the Italian one. Pairing it with oysters made sense in a period when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel: they turn up in period books scalloped, in patties, in stuffings, in soups and layered into pies, used much as a modern cook uses canned tuna or bacon, as a savoury filler rather than a luxury. The absence of quantities here is typical of the genre, and the closing line, "This makes a very nice dish," does the work that a headnote would do today.